


Crawl Out Through The Fallout, Baby (Into My Loving Arms)

by kittybenzedrine



Series: Crawl Out Through The Fallout [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Animal Death, Blood and Gore, Both Sole Survivors Live, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Graphic Description, Implied Sexual Content, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Postpartum Depression, Tags in Individual Chapters, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-02-19 02:20:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 83,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13113915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittybenzedrine/pseuds/kittybenzedrine
Summary: "So... What do we do?" Ren asks, brushing her hair from her face. Her pale skin makes her look sickly under the watery light coming from the few fluorescent bulbs that haven't burnt out. It doesn't help that her eyes are swollen and red from trying not to cry."Didn't I tell you earlier? We'll figure this out," Leo says, pressing his lips to her forehead. "I meant it in a different context, but it still stands. We'll figure everything out. You and I are in this mess together, Renee, come hell or high water."___________Sole Survivors Ren Valant and Leo Antipov both make it out of Vault 111, unhappy with the circumstances surrounding their reemergence into the world. Their son has been taken, and though neither of them are fond of being parents, they still pursue their missing child.Alternately: Two unhinged assholes are released into a lawless wasteland where they're free to do whatever they want with little repercussions. Leo's at peace with a knife in his hand, and Ren may or may not have a compulsive hoarding habit. Begrudgingly, they begin their search for their missing son. Neither pretend like they're good people, but somehow end up being half-way decent.Now with cover art!





	1. BEGIN ACT 1: Vault

Renee can do nothing but grip her husband's belt, shaking with adrenaline as she clenches her teeth. The two of them are silent on the long elevator ride down below the surface, though the other around them sob and whimper. In Leo's arms, Shaun's wails, still upsetted by the nearly deafening sound of the atomic bomb that just decimated South Boston. Everyone's ears are still ringing. Ren wants to cry along with him, but knows if she starts she won't stop. Leo allows himself a few shaky breaths, but that's as close to crying as he's going to get at the moment.

Cradling Shaun in one arm, Leo wraps the other around her waist. He hopes it's a small measure of comfort to her. Really, Ren wants to hold her baby for her own piece of mind, but she doesn't trust herself not to drop him from how hard she's trembling. She rests her head on Leo's shoulder, curls a finger into his beltloop.

Everything happened so fast. They were getting ready for the day, trying to mentally prepare to speak at the veteran's hall in Concord that night. The stupid Vault-Tec guy wouldn't leave until Leo filled out the paperwork for the vault, but he got it done and they made plans to take Shaun to the park. And then the TV gave the terrible news, and the sirens went off, and there was so much chaos and panic and and and-

Ren lets out a long, shaky breath and tamps down the urge to cry again.

Inside the vault, the sounds are overwhelming and make her grit her teeth harder. The low hum of fluorescent lights, machinery parts moving together, and the endless chatter from other people. It's putting her on edge. She's still in shock from what transpired less than five minutes ago, faintly wondering if they got a dose of radiation from the shockwave that blew over them. Ren shudders and forces down the panic and irritation rising in her throat.

Leo presses his hand to her lower back as their son's cries start to die down. Gently, he guides her forward to the staircase after their neighbors are all off of the elevator platform. The overseer praises the two them for having such a beautiful healthy baby, but neither respond.

She hears one of their neighbors cry about her parents in D.C. It nearly makes tears spill over, but Ren holds it back. Fuck, her brother. Her brother and his wife and their seven perfect little children. Caleb wasn't accepted into a vault. She wonders if her family survived. From the way Leo's hand fists into the back of her shirt, she can tell he's thinking about his best friends, the only other family he has. Several of them live in South Boston.

They have to wait in line for vault suits. While her and Leo idly stand, holding onto each other, she gazes at her child. The baby is a perfect mix of Ren and Leo's features. Shaun's exposed skin is paler than his father's, but darker than her own. His eyes have just started turning the shade of green her own eyes are, while his hair grows in thick and black like Leo's. Ren's nose, Leo's chin. His lips, her ears. Shaun's cries have finally stopped, his thumb firmly plugged into his mouth while he gazes at her. He's calm, but his eyes are still red and watery. Ren feels little attachment to her son, but she touches his tiny face anyway, swipes away the tears. More for her comfort than his.

Neither her nor Leo trust these decontamination pods one fucking bit, but they have little choice other than to climb in. She changes into her suit first, doesn't care a bit about modesty as she feels eyes on her bare skin. For the few moments it takes Leo to change, she holds Shaun to her chest. He nuzzles against her breast, but doesn't seem to be hungry yet. Just soaking in the attention from his mother. Somewhere behind them, a scientist assures them it’s safe for the baby to get in as well.

"We'll figure this out," Leo tells her as he takes Shaun back. It's the first thing either of them have said since leaving their home.

"I love you," she said, for lack of anything better to say. Tears brim in her eyes. The shock is hitting finally hitting her, and all at once. There’s an ugly lump in her throat and the shakes are back in force.

Though the doctors and scientist urge them to get in the stupid fucking pods already, he pulls Ren close. His fingers tangle into the curly brown mess of her hair, keeps her face pressed against his chest for just a few moments. When she pulls away, there are two small wet spots on his suit.

"We'll figure this out," Leo repeats, just a shade softer this time. Briefly, he cradles the side of her face with his free hand and kisses her. He has to be quick about it, knows if he lingers too long they might both lose it and break down.

 

 

 

 

It's cold, so cold when her eyes open back up. Fuck, she hates the cold. There's a robotic woman's voice speaking, the same one Ren heard just a few moments ago when the decontamination sequence began, but the words don't make any sense. Something about cryo stasis. They're in decontamination pods, aren't they? She shudders.

Using her arm to wipe the fog from the glass, Ren tries to get a look at Leo. Her tears have somehow frozen her eyes most of the way shut, but she gets them open. The scene in front of her is making less and less sense. She can see two people, and neither look like vault employees. There's a balding man in rusted, cobbled armor, assuring Leo it's over, he's safe. That it's all going to be alright. Someone in full body scrubs, a woman judging by the voice, tries to coax Shaun out of Leo's arms.

Leo refuses. Shows his teeth and hugs their now screeching baby close.

“Fuck you,” she hears her husband hiss.

The balding man levels a gun at Leo's chest. Ren's fist connects with the glass, panic filling her. She isn't even aware she's yelling at him until he briefly meets eyes with her. Her own voice very suddenly echos too loud in her ears as she shouts at him to "just give them the fucking baby". He's worth more to her than a child neither of them really wanted.

Still, he refuses. The woman takes Shaun with a mighty pull as a shot rings out. Ren's voice dies in her throat as Leo slumps back, going lax in his pod as blood seeps across his chest, staining the blue a deep crimson red. The balding man seems displeased with having to kill her husband, but knocks on Ren's pod and refers to her as "the backup" to the scrubs woman.

While both of their backs are turned, Leo opens his eyes just long enough to look at her her, then lets them shut as the man closes the pod back up. Ren lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding, though it sounds more like a sob.

 

 

 

 

She all but falls out as her pod releases and opens, coughing and choking for air as she hits the floor. The impact bruises her knees, sends jolts of pain up to her shoulders when her elbows connect with the concrete. The robot woman's voice chimes again about cryo stasis, but about there being a failure now. The floor is caked in dust, and every gasp makes her cough even more violently, until she feels like she going to puke. There's a soft hiss and a thump across from her. Then, a gag.

In front of her, on his hands and knees, Leo spits up blood. He's covered in frost in a way that she isn't, iced over like something left in the freezer for way too long. His lips and fingers are close to blue, and his long hair is frozen to his arms and back. Ice crystals cling to his lashes. Fresh blood dribbles from the center of his chest, unable to soak into the frozen fabric.

Her knee lands in a puddle of his spit and blood after she scrambles to close the distance between the two of them. Ren cradles his face in her hands, kisses him though she can taste the copper. Oh god, __he's alive.__

“Oh fuck, Leo, are you okay?” she asks in a panic, holding his head up to face her.

“Do I look okay?” he bites out through gritted teeth.

Ren nods, more at herself than anything. It was a stupid question. "I'll find something," she tells him, gets to her feet as he situates himself with his back against the pod. She'll get him some help, whether it be a doctor or some stimpacks. He grunts in response, keeping a shaky blue hand to his chest to try to stem the bleeding. Blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth. All the while, the voice softly chimes about failure in the cryo something or whenever.

Ren's on edge as she creeps out. The fucks who stole Shaun may still be around, and she's not as tough as Leo. Can't take a gunshot to the chest like he apparently can. But the place seems to be empty. Dead. Devoid of life other than the two of them. Rust creeps up the walls and water drips steadily to the floor, and she knows it takes a _long_ fucking time for that kind of decay to set in.

Where _is_ everyone?

There are also giant fucking bugs. Ren screams as the first roach skitters towards her and rather gracelessly punts it like an oversized football. Her leg has longer reach than this fucking baton she found. __Fuck__ she hates bugs. Why the hell are they suddenly the size of small dogs? She yells it a string of angry profanity so he knows she's alright. The last thing Ren wants is for him to hurt himself worse trying to help her. She doesn’t hear anything from behind her, though, so she assumes he’s stayed in place.

She finds one stim in a security office, but it seems to be the only one. Shit. One should be enough for now, but Leo's a big man and will definitely need at least two. Maybe a little bit of med-x if she can find it. She knows first-hand how much a stim to a bullet wound hurts. Neither of them are fond of drugs, but he’ll want the med-x if she can get ahold of any. Unwilling to make him wait any longer, she doubles back.

He's in the same position she left him in, though with another puddle of diluted pink blood next to him. Their eyes meet, though his brown ones are glassy and hazed with pain. She kneels down in front of him, unzips his suit to the bottom of his sternum and gently peels the frozen fabric away from his chest. Leo lets out a hiss of pain, grits his teeth, but holds up well otherwise. His hands are soaked in blood, and he's still steadily bleeding.

As easily as she can, she sticks the needle in just under the wound and he hisses again. He squeezes his eyes shut and tenses even after she pulls it out, teeth grinding. It's disgusting yet fascinating to watch as the healing skin forces the bullet out into his lap, thankfully not fragmented. More than likely the medicine only targets the worst of the damage on the inside, because the outer wound is still mostly open and raw.

Leo exhales roughly, resting his head back against the pod. He’s trembling now, obviously cold. The concrete floor is sapping the warmth out of her legs, she can’t imagine what it’s like for him. He’s wet and icy still.

Ren gets closer to him, nearly straddling his thighs. Tries to keep herself dry but fails. Normally she'd be doing this to seduce him, as well as unzipping the top of her own suit to expose her swollen breasts. "You need to warm up," she says, and it's not helping her case any. Sounds like a bad porno. But he gets the idea, and tucks his icy hands under each breast to warm himself up. She tries not to scream at the painful chill on her ribs. Skin to skin warms people up the fastest, she learned that in the army. The cold wetness of his thawing suit immediately soaks into hers, leaving her suit damp where they're touching.

"You're gonna leak milk on me," Leo grumbles, voice rough. And he's not wrong, it's definitely going to happen. Shaun's been cluster feeding, and she overly full from needing to feed him again.

"That should be the least of your worries," she says, then tells him what she's found.

"That scream was me coming across a roach the size of... Something big, I don't fucking know right now. Roach was bigger than a small dog, way bigger than my foot. And the place is deserted as far as I can tell, covered in rust and leaking water everywhere. The place is falling apart but that doesn't make sense. They just put us in, didn't they? Didn't they just take Shaun?"

It's a bad idea to bring up Shaun, she can tell by the look Leo gets in his eyes. It seems like just minutes ago she was shouting at him to give the baby up, but now she's not sure how long it's been. He's going to want to talk about the baby later, about what she said. Ren certainly doesn’t want to talk about it.

She sighs, pulls away from him and gets to her feet. His hands have a little more color in them, though he's still shivering in his wet suit. Under her tits are fucking freezing though. She can't imagine how cold and miserable here must be right now. Zipping her suit up, she gestures for him to follow. "Come on. Let's look around some more. See if we can find anymore stims or some people. And zip your chest up, need to keep the dirt and dust out of the wound."

It's easy to ignore the defrosting corpses of people they've known for years. People they tentatively have called friends. The two merely advert their eyes and go to the door. It's not like it's the first time they've seen the frozen bodies of people they know. Anchorage was hell.

 

 

 

 

With every skeleton and empty room they pass, anxiety bubbles under Ren's skin. Between the two of them, they find another baton, three 10mm pistols, and good amount of rounds. In the overseer's office, three stims lie on the desk. Leo uses a second on his chest, which knits the flesh fully back together. The paid doesn't immediately go away once he's healed up, but it's a hell of a lot better than the raw, half-open wound. The pink mark should be gone within a week, probably. He tucks one into his pocket for if he needs it later, and Ren takes the other for herself. As an afterthought, she plants a kiss on the mark, then zips the suit back up for him.

On the corpse of the overseer, his Pip Boy remains. Leo shakes it free of the skeletal arm and hooks it onto his own right arm. Old training from the army makes him want to put it on his left, like it was when he was enlisted, but he's primarily left handed and things will work easier with it on his right.

He scowls when it boots up blank. The terminal entries they've found piece together the story of unrest and eventual mutiny, but he was hoping to find something more in the dead man's files. Seems to have been wiped when he died though. It's strange. Same thing would happen with military issue Pip Boys, to avoid enemies getting any information off of them. But this isn't the sleek black kind that the military issued, this was a standard civilian ones. Civilian issue Pip Boys don’t wipe themselves upon the death of the user. Stranger still.

Flipping through the menus as Ren heads through the overseer's emergency exit, Leo catches sight of the date. His vision up close is poor, but he's absolutely certain of what he's seeing. He lets out a slow, even breath through his nose, hoping the thing is just malfunctioning.

Ren picks up a few still-packaged suits from the floor of the main room, holding onto them for the time being. There's a single XL left in men's, and two women's larges as well. They could come in handy.

Leo, being the kind and dutiful husband he is, kills the roaches for her while she fiddles with a Pip Boy she found close to the entrance. She doesn't seem to notice the date as she flicks though it, and Leo's grateful for that because he can't handle one of her panic attacks right now.

Once all of the bugs are dead, Ren has him change into a dry, clean suit which does wonders for his cold shakes. It warms him up after a while, though Ren holding onto him for dear life for a few minutes aids the process. They both needed the embrace far more than they're willing to admit.

"So... What do we do?" she asks, brushing her hair from her face. Her pale skin makes her look sickly under the watery light coming from the few fluorescent bulbs that haven't burnt out. It doesn't help that her eyes are swollen and red from trying not to cry.

"Didn't I tell you earlier? We'll figure this out," he says, pressing his lips to her forehead. "I meant it in a different context, but it still stands. We'll figure everything out. You and I are in this mess together, Renee, come hell or high water. Now…"

He loosely gestures towards where she got her Pip Boy from. "One of us hooks up, we open the door. From there I guess we go up and see what's left of the world. See if Sanctuary is still standing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy here we go. 
> 
> None of this is beta read, I just slap this hot garbage juice together and hit post. So if you notice anything that I missed, any misspellings or weird auto correct typos, let me know! My phone likes to change "the" to "there" very frequently.
> 
> I don't really have an update schedule set up for this, so if you enjoy it, subscribe to it. You'll get email notifications whenever my lazy ass updates.


	2. Sanctuary/ Red Rocket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only warning I really got for this chapter is a few mentions of sex and some non-explicit animal death

Looking down over the hill, it seems that there's quite a bit of their home left.

It's utter destruction, however. Leo boosts Ren up onto a few old rusted shipping crates to help her get a better view, then has her help him up. From their vantage point, Ren can see that several houses are collapsed into ruins, and everything is decaying. Everything is dead. The grass, the trees. She can't even hear any birds, any cicadas, not even the annoying crickets that seem to chirp at all hours. It's eerily quiet and she fucking hates it.

Blindly, she grabs for his wrist. " _How long have we been under_?"

Leo thinks back to the date he just saw and chooses not to answer her.

It's a struggle for Ren to not collapse into a puddle and panic while staring out at the carnage of her old home, but she gets through. She busies herself with scavenging the site, and suggests Leo do the same. Hidden in rotting wooden crates, she finds radaway, while Leo scours small trailers and finds food long expired, but still preserved. He also comes out of one twirling a switchblade in his fingers, looking significantly calmer with the blade in his hand.

After taking anything of value, he puts an arm around her waist. There's nothing left to do but head down into Sanctuary, unless they want to walk off into the woods and never look back. Ren kinda wants to take that second option, but Leo probably won't let her. He guides her down the path, already sensing her urge to run.

On the way down, she mumbles about finding some bottle caps to restart her collection. There's always assholes in the world, and it's blatant time has passed since they went into cryo. Someone's bound to have broken in and stolen her caps, it was an impressive cache of both beer bottle and nuka caps. Leo hums, and all he can think about is the date on his wrist. It’s beginning to look like it’s accurate.

The bridge is rickety and groans loudly under their weight. It holds up though, and they pass over the stream without the rotting wood giving way. They're overly cautious as they enter the neighborhood, but just like the vault, it seems to be dead. Just the buzzing of insects, and the faint sounds of something being clipped. A bush maybe. Who the fuck would be trimming hedges in the apocalypse?

Out on the sidewalk, Leo nudges Ren to draw her attention. "Codsworth," he murmurs, right as the Handy catches sight of them approaching.

"Sir? Mum?! It's... It's really you!"

Both know manic energy from Ren's mood disorder, and Codsworth is bursting with it. The Handy prattles on and on about how he's so glad they're back, it's so good to see them. Things have been terribly boring without them. And offhandedly, he mentions it's been 210 years. They must be famished! He should prepare dinner for the two of them!

Leo has to move quick to wrap both arms around her to keep her from collapsing in place. He feels a little light-headed himself, knowing that the date he saw truly isn’t wrong. It really has been that long.

"You knew?!" Ren asks, ripping away from him and backing towards the wreckage of their home. She knows he has to have, from how fast he reacted. Her legs shake with the effort of keeping herself upright.

"I was desperately hoping the Pip Boy was just malfunctioning and didn't want to worry you if it was wrong." Still, she looks at him like he’s betrayed her. He's only 34, but he feels much, much older right now.

  


  


  


  


She's angry, though she reasonably knows she shouldn't be. But she can't control her moods because of her stupid fucking broken ass brain, so she does her best not to lash out at him. He doesn't deserve it. All he was doing was trying to protect her

Leo gets Codsworth to break down after some skilled persuasion, and the bot admits that he's been slowly losing it. Everything fell to pieces after they left, and he was unable to do the duties he was programmed to do on account of nuclear fallout fucking everything up. Having the two of them around seems to right him a little bit though, and he asks about the missing member of their family once he's calmed.

Ren recounts what happened to Leo in the vault. The strangers demanding their baby, the one putting lead through Leo's chest. Leo is the one to actually tell Codsworth that Shaun was taken, when Ren omits the information. It isn't much help, but Codsworth offers to take them around the neighborhood on the off-chance that Shaun happened to be there somewhere.

As expected, they find nothing. Except for mutated bugs. Codsworth supplies names for the horrid creatures; the roaches are very creatively named radroaches, apparently, and weird giant flies that shoot maggots out of their asses are called bloatflies.

When Shaun unsurprisingly doesn’t turn up, Codsworth suggests Ren and Leo head to Concord. There may be people there, people that can help then better than he can. He's been in Sanctuary for the past 210ish years, since he was first assembled. Others will know more than him.

The sun is getting ready to set, though. Before the bombs, it took Leo and Ren an hour and a half to walk the two miles to Concord with minimal delays. An hour and forty-five minutes after Shaun was born and was brought along. Neither have any idea what waits over that bridge, and are unwilling to be stuck in the dark in this strange, unknown land.

With little other options of things to do, they clean up their home. Leo rights the furniture while Ren tracks down a broom and gets as much of the leaves and dirt out as she can. Their destroyed, empty bedframe is broken down and left for firewood in the living room, though neither are sure if the little fireplace still functions. It's a hard task with limited tools and rusted hinges, but they get the back door reattached. Really, the hardest part of everything is finding enough sheets and rugs to cover up their broken out bedroom windows.

Since there aren't enough sheets, Ren assigns herself the task of ransacking her dead neighbors' houses. She finds a few blankets, some sheets and even an intact mattress. The blankets and such are delivered to Leo, who pins them in place in front of the bedroom windows. Through a mouthful of nails, he tells her he'll retrieve the mattress when he's done and goes back to hammering the fabric down.

Under the guise of looking for supplies, she snoops through anything she can get her grubby little hands on. Several of her neighbors were druggies, according to a terminal she hacks into. Every safe with a lose lock is picked, and she finds some pretty decent shit. Documents of the personal and military kind, ammo, first aid supplies, the occasional cache of jewelry. She's got no idea what's valuable and what isn't, so she stuffs everything she can into the many pockets of her vault suit. If Leo notices her bulging pockets, he doesn't mention it.

The sun is mostly down by the time the mattress is in their room, and it's pitch black in there until they turn on their Pip Boy lights. In the green glow, they wrestle a spare fitted sheet onto the mattress to avoid sleeping directly on the filthy thing. It's barely big enough for two.

Codsworth keeps watch in the living room upon request, though he assures the two that it's unlikely anyone will show up. Still.

Leo strips down to nothing and collapsed onto the mattress, exhausted from the excitement of the day. Getting shot, rapidly healing from the wound, kicking bugs across a room, rebuilding the inside of his old home, and oh yeah, _having his fucking kid taken_.

Ren is preoccupied, piling up her findings in the remainder of their closet to be gone through and split between them tomorrow. There's plenty of medical supplies, like the med-x which would have been useful earlier. She's also preoccupied with wanting a snack, but that's not going to happen, so she undresses and lays down with him.

It's an uncomfortably tight fit. They have to spoon to keep from falling off the bed, and the mattress is lumpy and uneven. But they do it without complaint, and he's careful not to touch her milk swollen chest by accident, lest she bitch at him for it.

Her mind races as she settles in under the blanket. She tries to distract herself, thinks about the warm body pressed against her back and the chill of the late October air cooling her face. Tries to focus on Leo's hand on her belly, lazily tracing his fingers across her stretch marks while he winds down to sleep. The hot puffs of his breath again her skin. It doesn't work though.

Just last night, they were in this same room. Their bed was still intact, the windows still holding glass and covered with blinds and soft peach colored curtains. She was on top of Leo, enjoying some rare alone time with her husband while the baby slept, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise.

They kissed after it was over, hard but sweet. He promised her that once this bout of cluster feeding was over and their son slept through the night again, he'd give her the "handcuff treatment". She was excited at the thought of being cuffed to the bed and ravaged to oversensitivity, but more focused on nuzzling into his warmth. They hadn't gotten to be properly intimate since Shaun was born around six months ago. It was the first time since his birth that sex didn't hurt her, in fact. Ren just wanted to relish in the aftermath of good sex and an even better orgasm, to soak in every little kiss that was peppered to her skin.

But that was over 200 years ago, not a day. She woke up to normalcy and gets to fall asleep to carnage.

"Why are we doing this?" she asks into the silence, mouth working before her brain even registers that she's spoken.

His fingers still trace across her stretch marks, following one all the way down to the coarse hair on her pubic bone, then finding another to follow back up her stomach. "Hm?"

"Why are we doing this?" she repeats, staring out at the open doorway. In the distance, she can hear the faint whirring of Codsworth's propulsion system as he idly moves about. "Why... Why are we looking for Shaun?"

Leo doesn't speak right away, so she fills in the silence. "We didn't want kids anyways, and now we have a guilt-free method of getting him off our hands. It’s fucked up, I know, but… We, we don't have to do this. It's the end of the world, hell, it's 200 years past that and the only ones who know about him are the two of us and Codsworth. We don't-"

"We have an obligation," Leo says eventually, cutting her off. "As much as I dislike having obligations, he's our child. We decided not to abort or adopt, and now we have a responsibility to find him and keep him safe."

Ren stays silent, and his fingers still on her stretch marks. He's not going to let this go. Not going to let _Shaun_ go, no matter how much neither of them want to be parents. She shifts on the uncomfortable mattress, and feels his breath ghosting over her skin.

"Besides. You know how I feel about people taking things that are mine."

  


  


  


  


Her Pip Boy alarm wakes them up at 6AM sharp. There's hardly any light out and they both feel like shit from sleeping on that awful mattress, but they get up and get dressed anyways.

It's cold, cold enough that they spend an hour scavenging through the other houses until they find something to layer over their suits. All they manage to find are jackets, so they make do. Leo hates his jumpsuit, loathes the bright blue and yellow. He wants something else to wear. But there are little options, so she keeps a lookout in case she finds something he'd like. Something black, maybe, or at least dark brown.

Leo grumbles something about killing anyone that sees him in the damn thing. He's not fit to be seen in such an atrocious piece of shit, and the only reason Codsworth is allowed to live is because the bot agrees that the suits are a crime against humanity. Ren tosses him a dark brown jacket, and points out Codsworth has seen his bare ass.

"My bare ass isn't an atrocity," he counters, shrugging the coat on and zipping it up.

"That's debatable," Ren says with a smile, tugging on a tan jacket. It's too big, but it's the only thing large enough to accommodate her swollen chest.

Codsworth bids them farewell as they get ready to leave. Leo found some packs in one house, so all of Ren's junk gets tucked away in hers while the medical supplies and divvied between their pockets. They've got three stims each, and still have the security batons and 10mm's from yesterday. Hopefully they won't run into anything too bad.

"Why do I feel like I'm gonna lose an incredible amount of weight out here?" Ren asks they cautiously cross the bridge to get on the road. It creaks loudly, and they're both on edge once it becomes apparent that half of it has caved in and broken. "All this walking is going to have me as skinny as I was before I hit puberty."

"You'll probably lose the leftover baby weight and that's about it. Even now you're not fat, still right where you should be from having a child." He throws an arm around her shoulder as they walk. "I've never known you to be that thin, even when the army had you in peak shape."

She scowls, though it's only to hide a mischievous smile. "So, what I'm hearing is I'm fat and always have been."

Leo lets out an exasperated sigh. "You're top heavy and bottom heavy, with a proportional amount of stomach. We're not having this argument today."

Ren wants to continue being a pest, but they reach the end of the bridge to find a dead man and an equally as dead mutated dog. It's hard to tell what took out the man, but the pipe through the dog's ribs and the various welts and open wounds makes it obvious what its fate was.

"If he wasn't dead already, I'd certainly make him that way," Leo mutters, kneeling down to search the guy's pockets. "I'd take the dog meat, but dog meat is stringy and unpleasant to eat. That, and it's been dead too long."

"How the fuck do you know what dog meat is like?" Ren asks, moving away to head to the statue. There's a green dufflebag, and she finds some ammo in it. Not the kind she needs, but she holds onto it anyway. Some kind of gun is in there too, but it's a shitty cobbled together thing that's probably likely to blow up in your hand.

"Remember how I grew up on the streets? You learn to eat what's available."

He stands, not expecting an answer and not giving her the time to give one. "Come on. What did you find? I got some ammunition that's completely useless for what guns we have."

"Same as you," she replies, going back to her spot on his right. "Just some useless ammo. There was some kind of shitty gun like those ones we found yesterday, think you called them pipe guns? The terrible ones, with nails for sights. Either way, I left it."

They idly chat about the shit guns while they walk to the Red Rocket. Ren wants to ransack it as well, maybe see if there's anything for Leo to wear. A green mechanic's jumpsuit would look phenomenally better on him than the ugly vault blue. Maybe there'll be something decent to eat. They both skipped breakfast, as there wasn't much left other than rotting roach meat.

Leo tenses when she gasps.

"Doggy," she whispers, pointing at a very healthy looking German Shepherd. It sits as if waiting for command, but dances in place in a way that he's only seen Shepard's do. It's caught sight of them and looks ready to burst from excitement.

He lets out an annoyed sigh. "No."

"Doggy!"

"No. You don't even like dogs, Renee." Fuck. Dealing with her is like having an overgrown toddler sometimes.

"I like him." She pulls in a deep breath, and then shouts "DOGGY!"

The dog is on her in a flash, knocking her down and viciously licking her face. Ren squeals, tries to turn away from it, but the dog is relentless in his greeting. Leo stands by idly, letting nasty dog kisses be a punishment.

Once he feels she suffered enough, he gives a sharp command. "Down."

The dog listens, immediately climbing off of her and sitting. Still, he vibrates with energy as soon an Ren gets to her feet, leaning as far as it can to lick her without breaking command.

"I love him," Ren declares, and makes her way to the filling station. There are a few first aid kits that she can see, and they need to be emptied directly into her pockets. She pats her thigh to make the dog follow.

"We're not keeping it."

"He's my best friend and I love him."

"No. We can barely feed ourselves, and once we find Shaun I'm certainly not going to provide for four." He ignores her gleefully petting the dog while he digs through shelves and behind counters. He finds cram, which isn't... too terrible. Not preferable, but it's food. There's even a small cooking station out back, so they don't have to eat it cold.

Leo steps out onto the pavement, ready to draw his wife's attention, when the dog's ears fold back and it begins growling in Leo's direction. It takes a few slow, pointed steps towards him.

Fuck. He doesn't want to kill this dog in front of her, but he's certainly not going to let it maul him. Ren tries to call the dog, but it ignores her. Leo takes a step back, reaching to draw his gun, when the ground starts to vibrate under his boots.

Some ugly pink thing bursts out from where he was just standing, and the dog springs into action. Leo doesn't even get to get a good look at it before the dog has the squealing creature by the throat, shaking it until it's dead. He pulls out his baton instead of wasting bullets, as does Ren, and several more spring through the crumbling concrete.

Caving their skulls in is uneventful as far as killing animals goes, but the little bastards are tough and take a few hits. By the time the three of them are done, eight of the things are dead and no more pop out. Upon closer inspection, they look like mole rats.

The dog comes up to him, and drops the fattest one at his feet. It looks down at the molerat, then back up at him. Am offering. Its muzzle is covered in blood, and it looks pleased with itself.

Fuck. The thing is useful. Leo sighs, loud and long. "Looks like we're keeping it after all. Good boy."

The dog happily accepts the praises and head rubs from him.

He skins and prepares the meat with practiced hands using the knife he found yesterday, while Ren goes through everything possible. She doesn't find anything for him to wear, but she does find more ammo and some old porn magazines in the back. He scoffs when she puts the pornography in her bag, but doesn't judge. He'll probably end up using it at some point. She will too, probably.

"I skinned it, you cook it," he calls, dumping the diced meat into the pot out back. It starts sizzling immediately, and fuck it smells good. Not to mention the warmth of the fire is nice.

She's out the garage door a moment later, dog still at her heels. "Did you make enough for Dogmeat?"

"I think it's morbid that you're calling him that, but yes. He killed it, he gets a share. Did you find any dishes?"

"I did, but they're dirty and the water coming from the sink is irradiated." She takes an old wooden spoon off of the cooking rack and gets to work. "So if you wanna do dishes, that'd be great. I think I'm just gonna cook this like chicken and hope for the best."

It ends up tasting fucking terrible, and it's not her fault. Dogmeat eats it with vigor, but Ren and Leo have to force themselves to finish it. It tastes like what an old, moldy foot smells like. She was right to cook it so long, at least. The burnt spots taste best.

Once they've eaten, he stashes the cram away and gives the place another once-over for valuables while she works to close up the shop. They'll definitely come back here, one way or another.

"I like this place," Ren says, looking out the broken front windows. "It'd be nice to set up here. We could move all the shit out of that back room and make it a bedroom, use the garage as a workshop. Maybe find some shit in Concord to use as furniture. We could set this place up real nice, so we don't have to go to Sanctuary. I actually still really hate that place, you know?"

Gently as he can, he backs her into a wall. Funny coming from her, as she was the one who picked the house out in the first place. "Yes, yes, I'm aware you hate Sanctuary. I'll think on it." With that, he leans in and kisses her, smiling into it when she wraps her arms around his neck to draw his body in closer. They're married adults on a mission, but that isn't going to stop him from suggesting they fool around a little first. He reaches for the zipper on her jacket, and she doesn't stop him.

In the distance, in Concord, the faint pops of gunfire begins to sound. Just a few at first, and then at least half a dozen guns going off at once. They pull away from each other and both look in that direction. Dogmeat perks up.

"I guess that's our cue to go," Leo mutters with a scowl, and checks to make sure his clip is full.


	3. Concord/Deathclaw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you ever seen a man punch out a deathclaw
> 
>  
> 
> ___  
> Lots of canon typical violence in this one. Losts of raiders getting murdered. Tons of violence to the deathclaw, like fuckin disembowelment, some eye horror, non-explicit implied sex

The sounds of gunfire sing louder as the three get closer to the center of Concord. Dogmeat happily trots along behind them, but seems to be keeping an eye out for any threats. Ren and Leo stick to the shadows, trailing along the sides of buildings and moving slow to keep themselves concealed.

"I think it's coming from the museum," Ren suggests quietly, unsure if there's danger close to them.

Leo hums, and peeks around the corner of a shop. This would be so much easier with a decent scope, or without more fucking buildings partially in his way. Even easier if Ren has a decent scope and a secure perch. "Can't see that far, but I think you're right. Sounds like six guns, maybe seven. How do you want to play this?"

He pulls back and faces her. Without giving her a chance to suggest anything, he offers, "I'm thinking we go in from opposite sides, have the dog run by to draw their attention to see if they're hostile. If they are, we take them out when they're distracted?"

Ren knows that him asking is more of a formality than anything. She knows her husband well. He's going to do what he wants, whether she follows or not. But it's an alright plan, so she isn't going to argue with it. "Sounds fine."

"Good. Conserve ammunition, if possible." He holds his switchblade out to her, and shows her a combat knife she didn't know he had. "It's not great, but it's the best option we have right now. I sharpened it up for you. Remember our training from Anchorage? Shoot them, and if they don't die, slit their throats. Try to sever the jugular if you can."

With that, he plants a kiss on her lips. "Go right. I'll cross the road and send the dog. Good luck, don't die.

He sets off, snaps at the dog to make him follow. She goes where he directed, staying low and keeping her footsteps as light as possible. The 10mm is securely in her right hand, and the blade in a vice grip in the other. Just like Anchorage, just like Anchorage.

Ren knows what he meant about the training, but once her superiors found out just how good she was with a gun, she was paired off with another sniper out of necessity. She wasn't on the front lines in power armor the entire time like he was, mowing the Chinese down with assault rifles and knifing them when they didn't die. She was perched on cliffs, staring down a sniper rifle and popping heads off, putting high caliber rounds through throats and watching the bright red spray across the snow.

Shaking her head, she moves on. No need to dwell on it.

The shooting is close, way too close for comfort. She looks around a corner, and several folks in cobbled together armor shoot at the museum with reckless abandon. Up on a balcony, a man in a rather stupid looking hat shoots back with some kind of laser weapon. Six against one doesn't sound too fair, especially when she notices a dead man sprawled at the foot of the museum steps.

Somehow, the guy on the balcony catches sight of either her or Leo. Maybe it's the bright blue and his vantage point. She doesn't quite catch what he shouts, but she understands "civilians", "help", and "please" easily enough.

Looking across the way, she sees Leo appear from behind the side of a building. He's all too noticeable with his lower half in that ugly blue, but none of the attackers seem to see him. They've got to be impaired somehow, since only two have any kind of vision limiting head gear. On drugs probably. Leo grabs the closest one and covers their mouth, slits their throat full across and pulls them back from where he came, completely out of sight. Hiding the bodies, smart man.

A moment later, he comes back out. He glances around until he catches sight of her, and gives her a sharp nod. Ren makes a mental note to try to find him some elastics as his hair whips in a sudden bout of wind. Wearing it up will be easier. Shit, she needs some too. Once again, he disappears.

She lines up a shot to the one that's closest, ready to blow out the back of the woman's skull when a sharp whistle cuts through the air. The attackers shout at each other, turn towards Leo's hiding spot until they hear the dog start wildly barking and barreling towards them.

While they're distracted in the confusion, she lines back up and pulls the trigger. She only catches the woman in the shoulder, but it slows her down. The woman whips around, wildly looks around to see who shot her. Doesn't even seem to be phased by the bullet in her, which confirms Ren's drug theory. No one gets shot and barely flinches unless they're too fucked up to feel it.

Ren doesn't get back behind cover in time, and woman shouts "hey!" when she sees the flash of blue. A moment later, the attacker's head disintegrates into ash as a red beam connects with it. Two down, three to go.

There's a sickening snap as she comes back out, and then someone wailing. Leo's holding someone back by the arm, and the person's arm is visibly broken. He kicks them away, and when they hit the ground, he puts a bullet into the back of their head. Another laser beam takes down one that tries to run at Leo while he’s busy, the person's gun skittering across the cracked pavement. Four down. One left.

The fifth ducks out of a building, shouts, runs at her like his head isn't on straight. He's stumbling and swaying, unsteady and blatantly on something, but it's easy enough to pop a bullet into his face before he can club her head in with a pipe.

Up on the balcony, the man with the laser gun calls down one last plea for help, before disappearing into the museum. Ren glances across the way at Leo, who shrugs, then points at the doors. Before entering, they play a quick round of "rock, paper, scissors" for the musket on the ground. Ren wins, scoops up the gun, and they head inside.

  


  


  


  


  


By the time they reach the top, they're no longer in the bright vault blue. Wearing clothes they've just pulled off the dead isn't preferable, but it offers better protection than the thin flimsy suits. Makes them less visible. The motorcycle leathers, while ripped up, are more comfortable too. The shitty, cobbled together leather armor affords just the tiniest amount of extra protection, but it's fucking hot and Ren's soaked in sweat from the chest plate.

The man in the stupid hat looks them over, eyeing them suspiciously. It's no wonder, they went from clean blue to filthy raider gear and armor. She thinks those people were called raiders, at least. But he still lowers his gun and holds out his hand in a show of good nature, introducing himself as Preston Garvey. He also says he's a member of the Commonwealth Minutemen. Ren has to try not to laugh as the outfit and gun click with the title. There's a time and a place to laugh, and it's certainly not in this room full of sorrowful and scared faces.

Ren takes his hand first. "Renee Valant."

Leo is next. "Léonce Antipov. What can we do to help?"

Preston sighs, gives them a tragic story. Attack on a settlement by his own people, men he trusted with his life. He stayed with the cause, helped evacuate the survivors when the time came. Started with twenty, had eight yesterday, and only five left today. And reinforcements are coming, but not for them. For the raiders. With tired eyes, Preston looks towards a man in overalls and the most ridiculous pompadour Ren's ever seen. "Sturges?"

Sturges has an equally as ridiculous accent, like he was born and raised in the deep south of the Texas Commonwealth. He turns away from the terminal and tells them of a crashed verti-bird up on the roof. Has a set of power armor and a sweet minigun, but the power armor is missing a fusion core. He says there's one downstairs behind a locked door, which looks like it can either be picked or opened with a terminal. He isn't sure though, couldn't get a good look due to raiders trying to tear his face off.

Both Ren and Leo agree with the plan. Power Armor and a minigun versus a handful of poorly armed, drug addled assholes? Sounds like a fucking party.

The overly loud clack of their Pip Boy's knocking startles everyone in the room when Ren tries to take Leo's hand. Well. That's going to be a fucking problem, because she likes to hold his hand and it's not safe to hold dominant hands when they could need to draw their guns at a moment's notice.

Already hyper vigilant, nobody misses the unmistakable sound of animal feet race through the halls. Not heavy and fat, can't be molerat. Dog, probably. Shit, did they miss a guard dog? Preston, Leo, and Ren all train guns at the door, and lower them once Dogmeat pops through, all excitement and bloody fur. He plods over and sits at the feet of an old woman covered in old, poorly healed burn scars. Absentmindedly, Ren scratches at the faded burn on her left cheek. The burns look old enough that Ren wonders if the woman’s injuries are from her childhood, much like her own.

The old woman murmurs praises to the dog, who breaks away from her after a moment and lays down next to a man on the floor. The guy is shaking, rocking himself and barely containing his tears. A woman with a sour face paces the room, her own eyes red rimmed. It's sad, but not their problem at the moment.

"So anyways, he said we need a fusion core?" Ren asks once they've left the room, looking smugly at her husband.

Leo rolls his eyes. "Save it, I don't want to hear your shit. Let's go look at the suit and figure out who should take it."

" _Just leave it_ ," she playfully mocks, following him out a door to where the armor should be. " _We don't need it, don't waste your bobby pins on it. There's no use for it. You're wasting time_."

He looks less than impressed with her. "I'm going to smother you in your sleep, love of mine."

  


  


  


  


  


"A little small, but I think I can manage it for a short time," Leo murmurs, more to himself than anything. "This arm is bad... Leg's nearly rusted off. Mm. Not preferable, but it should hold up alright. Renee?"

Ren shakes her head. "It's all yours. It's easier to work in a suit that's too small rather than too big, and this frame is meant for someone who's..." She squints at a jumble of letters and numbers on the back of the chest plate. "5'11. Three inches taller than me, and inch and a half shorter than you. You'll definitely fit it better."

She passes him the core and watches him climb into the suit once it powers up. He moves all the joints, breaking up the rust, tests his range of mobility in the degraded hunk of metal. Once he deems it ready, he climbs into the vertibird and tears the minigun from its stand like it's nothing.

"Don't get hurt, and don't get in my way. This thing will shred you in seconds. Stay safe," Leo says, then jumps off the edge of the building.

The moment she hears the reverberating bang of his landing on the concrete, she races back the way they came. With as many voices as she heard down in the street, he's going to need help. Preston's gone when she darts through the room, probably already back out on the balcony providing reinforcements. It'll take her too long to retrace their steps to get down to the ground floor, so she hastily calculates the distance of her fall, then leaps off of one floor to the other.

Fuck. She's so glad she took up parkour as a teenager, because rolling into the landing comes as easy as breathing. The second landing to the bottom floor doesn't go as smoothly, and she hurts her wrist. It definitely isn't broken or sprained, so she ignores it and scrambles for the door.

She heads out of the museum doors just in time to watch Leo heft the minigun into his right hand, bullets pinging off of the power armor. There are a few chewed up bodies on the ground, riddled with bullet holes and are mostly made up of gore.

He's not shooting anymore. When one raider gets too close, she watches him use the gun like a fucking club. The raider stagger back, but runs at him again. This time, Leo grabs him with his free left hand and bounces the guy's head off of the barrel. She can hear his skull crunch from across the distance. Huh. Figures. Leo's more of a blunt object and blade kind of person. Ren didn't think he'd use the bullets for long.

Going around the way Leo originally came when first entering Concord, she sneaks up on a few of the raiders and takes them out pretty easily. All of the raiders seem to be fucked up on something. Meth maybe? Does meth even exist anymore? Either way, they're not very bright and the other chest piece deflects bullets pretty well.

There's a blue structure that was a cute mom and pop diner, now sitting empty. If Ren can get up on the balcony, she'll have a decent sniper's perch and she's really been itching to try out this "laser musket" as Preston called it.

A woman startles her in the stairwell. At least, Ren thinks they're a lady, because she can't see the person's face. They're wearing some kind of ugly burlap sack as a mask, with a bunch of weird hoses and gas mask eyes attached to it. A swift punch to the jaw doesn't do much other than disorient them, but it's a distraction enough for Ren to grab them and snap their neck.

Up on the balcony, Ren does a quick survey. Leo and Preston have already made great progress in the five minutes it took her to get here, and less than half of raiders stand left of the 15 or so that arrived. Even with the helmet on, she can picture the feral grin on Leo's face as he lifts a raider with one hand and tosses them at a building so hard that blood spatters the wall behind them when they hit.

She cranks the musket just once to conserve what little ammunition she has for it. Fuck, she's so ready to use this gun.

At the intersection just a little ways away, she hears a bang. It's heavy and metallic. It sounds again, and this time she's able to recognize where it's coming from. Under the metal access panel?

Everything seems to stop as something tries to burst from under it. Guns lower, the raiders hesitate, even Leo seems perplexed. Looking through the sights, Ren can see something like slender tan knives poking out as the metal panel is slowly knocked further and further to the side.

With one last mighty shove, the creature frees it self. The thing is big and ugly with giant horns protruding from its head, a tail like a gator, and long blades for fingers. It looks like something a child would draw and label a monster. And it fucking roars like a nightmare.

The street is silent enough after that Ren can clearly hear Preston, even across the distance.

"Oh _shit_."

 

 

 

 

 

" _Deathclaw_!" Preston shouts, and just like that, everyone starts moving again.

Ren can't help but scoff. These people are so fucking creative with naming things. Radroach, deathclaw. She starts to line up a shot, but the thing is quick, gallops in the road on all fours like some kind of deranged bear and grabs the nearest raider.

Its claws shred through the guy's armor like wet paper, and he screams right up until he can't anymore because the things slices through him. It discards his corpse and rushes the next one it can reach. Bullets bounce uselessly off of its face and body, which Ren takes note of. Headshots with regular guns don't seem to do anything, but maybe with a laser rifle?

The laser does nothing but piss it off more. Both her and Preston get it at the same time, but she's certain it screams from the shot he put in its belly. Hm.

"Get to cover!" she shouts down at Leo, who calls back something that sounds a lot like "fuck you". Stupid fucking bull headed, stubborn asshole, bitch motherfucker (heh, technically not wrong). She internally calls him every word she knows while he and the deathclaw make short work of the rest of the raiders.

Her second shot only glances off of the deathclaw's arm, and it doesn't particularly seem to care because it's too busy repeatedly slamming a second raider into the ground over and over. It then plunges its claws in once the meat is tender enough, but the raider's screams stopped at least three body slams before.

It tosses its victim down once their bones are no longer solid, and zeroes in on Leo. Ren takes another potshot at its belly and her internal theory is confirmed when it shrieks again. Everything seems to be well armored and will protected except for the belly. It doesn't slow the thing down though, and it runs at him with an inhumanly terrifying speed.

"Aim for the belly!" she shouts, hoping he can hear her over the whir of the minigun that he's just restarted.

Leo aims for the general area of its core, and when it swipes at him, he ducks and presses the red-hot barrel to its belly like a brand. The scream it lets out is horrifying. He rears back, ready to start using the temporarily out-of-commission gun as a club again, but the deathclaw picks him up like a toy soldier and tosses him down the road. The minigun skitters across the road with an awful noise as he goes flying. Ren's breath catches in her throat when he bounces, lands, stays still. But he gets up after a moment, and he's pissed. Even wearing that tin can, she can tell he's livid.

Once again, she shoots, catching it on one of its legs as it barrels towards her husband. It staggers but doesn't fall, and with a swipe, Leo's knocked back down before he can attack. Preston shouts something that she doesn't catch, and she has to force back the urge to vomit when the deathclaw tries to sink its claws into Leo's chest as he kicks out at the beast. They screech off of the chest plate, and Ren makes a split second decision.

Her feet pound on the stairs, and she nearly trips over the corpse she left there in her rush to get to the bottom floor. With the laser musket secured to her back, she pulls the 10mm and stands in the doorway, only taking the time to aim enough to hit the deathclaw. Fuck, fuck. It looks like it's too big to get through the door, but if it does come though it's definitely too big to get up the stairs. It's a calculated risk that she's taking, but fuck Ren's really bad at math. This might not end well if it gets in here with her.

She unloads the entire clip into it, distracting it enough for Leo to roll away and get to his feet. Its head snaps towards her, and all too quick it's in the doorway, roaring and swiping at her as she backs into the counter just out of its reach. Her heart races and her hands shake as she reloads, but it can't fit inside. Yet again she empties another clip, feeling absolute dread welling in her chest as the wooden frame starts to bow and audibly crack under the pressure.

There's a metallic bang and several crunching sounds from right behind the deathclaw, and it screeches in pain, staggers back from the door and spins around. Its tail is visibly broken in a spot where Leo stomped it, and she catches sight of her beautiful, psychotic husband lunging at it with his combat knife.

Of fucking course.

He plunges the blade into one eye, and fuck, up close the sheer volume of the deathclaw's screaming makes her ears ring. It doesn't die though, even when Leo latches his arm onto its neck and twists the knife in the socket. He looks like some kind of unhinged monkey in a metal suit, hanging onto the beast with one arm while it thrashes around and tries to shake him off.

Using the momentum from its shaking, he swings himself up and tightens his legs around its neck, grabbing a horn to keep himself from being thrown a third time. Its claws screech uselessly off of his armor as he digs deeper into the eye socket, roaring through his helmet for it to "fucking die already".

There isn't much she can do, so Ren merely takes the time to reload a third time with her trembling hands. She aims, fires into the leg closest to her in an attempted to cripple the limb. If she aims anywhere else, the bullets could ricochet off of Leo's armor and hit her, or hurt him if she catches a gap. If she's lucky, she'll get, well, lucky, and do real damage. If it shakes Leo off, it at least won't be able to run if she can damage its leg. If, if, if.

The deathclaw starts to panic. Half blind, in agony, with a knife in its eye and a man hanging from its body. Bullets hitting its leg and the occasional laser searing its back. It's a top predator, unused to taking so much resistance, so much _damage_.

The entire frame of the building shakes when it slams Leo's body into a wall, inadvertently driving the knife deeper into its eye. What's left of the glass in the windows rattles when it does it again, nearly knocking the wind out of him. Both are relentless, and after the deathclaw nearly breaking a hole in the wall with him, Leo very suddenly removes the gore soaked knife, drops to his feet, and sprints to the minigun left forgotten in the street.

Unwilling to let him go now, the deathclaw chases after. It doesn't expect him to drop to his knees as soon as it reaches him. Leo ducks under its claws and sinks the blade in low on the soft of its belly, dragging it up to its chest in a ragged but relatively straight line. Straight through a litter of bullet holes and the raw wound from the red-hot barrel of the gun. The sound it makes is fucking unholy.

Ren cautiously exits the building, sparing a glance up at Preston since he's stopped firing. His gun is propped up on the balcony, hat off while he runs his fingers through his hair. She can't see his expression from this far away, but she can imagine it's something closely akin to "what the fuck". She feels much the same as she turns her attention back to her husband.

Blood pours from the deathclaw's eye and belly, and Ren kinda feels bad as she watches the beast panic, trying to hold its guts in while fending Leo off. It doesn't really work, its own intestines getting shredded by its claws as they spill out. Leo's foot connects with the deathclaw's bloody center, knocking it onto its back. It lets out a little squeal as the spines along its back get snapped, looking much smaller and pathetic as it tries to scoot away from him while leaving a trail of blood.

Leo's quick about ending it at least. Three sharp, fast kicks to its skull later, there's an ugly crack. It's making awful, whiny noise that resonate with her defective maternal instincts, making her want to scoop it up and protect it. Another harsh kick, and it starts to seize. He brings the metal boot down on its face, hard enough that the concrete under its skull breaks as it goes still.

He steps back, audibly huffing as he regards the dead beast. Blood roars in his ears, but he can still clearly hear Preston shout "what the fuck!" from the museum. He says something else that Leo can't hear over the rushing blood, but Ren calls something back. Fuck. Leo feels fucking fantastic, the thrill of the fight and the burn of bloodlust coursing in his veins. He hasn't truly felt like this in years. From his left, Ren says something to him.

Ren. She upright and talking, and definitely not shredded to bits by the satan lizard. She's alright then. He got to her in time. Leo looks to the balcony, but Preston is gone. Oh good.

After climbing out and using the power armor to block the door, he backs Ren into the counter. It's probably not normal for fights to do this to him, but oh well. He's gonna chase this high as long as he can. Her eyes follow his hands as he reaches for his belt, and she looks up after seeing the erection pressing against the fabric of his pants.

"Now?" she asks incredulously, but reaches for her own pants, her hands still shaking with adrenaline.

"Now," he all but growls back, pulling her into a vicious kiss.

  


  


  


  


  


Inside the museum, Preston's nearing the end of recounting the story to the small group when the two enter. He looks up, visibly a little pale as Leo wipes the gore covered knife off on his pants. Leo's black and blue in several spots, but he doesn't seem affected in the slightest as he crosses his arms and stands in front of the group. Dogmeat woofs in their direction, but stays seated next to the old woman.

"That was... Really something. I'm sure glad you're on our side," Preston tells him, leaning his back against the wall.

Leo nods. "Mm. Will you all be alright?"

"Yeah, we should be alright for now." Preston hands Ren a handful of the energy cells for the musket on her back, and offers Leo a small bag of jiggling metal as a token of thanks. Says it's the Minutemen's job to help out those who help them.

Preston also tells Leo that they're headed to Sanctuary. The old woman, Mama Murphy, has had "visions" of the place, and they want to rebuild there if it's safe. He asks if Leo and Ren will come with them. Before Leo can speak, Ren tells him that they'll meet them there. They need to gather the supplies from the dead raiders and do something with the power armor, but they'll definitely be there. The road should be safe and clear.

Mama Murphy starts rambling, something about "the sight" and their energy being tied to Sanctuary. Something else about their son being alive, still out there, and when tersely prompted by Leo, she tells them where to start their search. The great green jewel of the Commonwealth, Diamond City. She can't give them anything else, but says she can if they provide her some chems.

Arguments break out after that, and Ren and Leo leave them to it. Not their problem. Both are tense as they search the bodies of the dead raiders, taking all the chems, ammo, and other supplies that they can carry. They'll take what they need a leave a little bit in Sanctuary with the survivors.

"You think she was telling the truth?" Ren asks after the group has left, out of earshot but still in sight.

"Even if I didn't, it's the only lead we've got. Do I like our odds of listening to an apparently omniscient drug-addled old woman? No, frankly I don't. But it's the best bit of information we have to work with." He shakes his head, allowing her to lean against him. "Anyhow. Help me get a clean pack off of one of these dead fucks. If the meat from that fucking devil lizard is edible, I'm taking as much of it as possible."

While he carves up the deathclaw, Ren takes chunks of the destroyed intestines, cuts it up into small bits and tosses it to a small flock of corvids standing a ways away, waiting to pick at what's left. The birds greedily eat it down, squawking for more.

"I'm glad to see that crows survived at least," she tells him, slicing up a few more bits to give to the growing crowd of birds. "I like crows."

"Stop feeding the birds, you'll make them weak and dependent on humans," Leo mutters, taking his time to get a few choice cuts from the body. Ren pointedly ignores him and finishes cutting up the section of intestines, shows the birds her empty hands when she's done, and wanders while Leo works.

  


  


  


  


  


They end up leaving most of their supplies in the Red Rocket, as well as the power armor. Ren closes up the garage and idly bounces ideas off of him while they walk to Sanctuary. She wants to board up the front windows for privacy, maybe build a small room off of the side of the garage, or even set up a generator to power the place. All Leo hears is that she wants him to do manual labor.

Preston once again thanks them profusely when they meet up in Sanctuary. They talk about the little subdivision, and it ends up coming out how old the two of them are when Ren mentions how pretty the place was before the war.

Leo explains what happened with the war, with Shaun, unbuttons his shirt enough to show the healing pink scar that's highlighted with bruising. Preston looks stunned. It's a lot to take in, and Ren doesn't mind one bit when he changes the subject and asks for their help again. Apparently a settlement to the east is having raider trouble and is asking for help from the Minutemen, if they still exist.

They'll help, of course. Ren's willing to do anything to avoid parental duties for as long as possible, and Leo seems to have already taken a liking to the Minutemen.

Deathclaw meat _is_ edible after all, and the group of seven have a decent meal together. Preston is the first to give cooking instructions, so Leo ends up making them like steaks. Not only is it edible, but it's really fucking good and Ren is kind of mad that deathclaws are so formidable. That means less of their delicious flesh for her to devour.

There isn't much left for them to do in Sanctuary for the day, so Leo checks the hour to see if he and Ren have enough time to explore a bit more before settling in for the night. It's only six or so, Leo can't really read the numbers on his Pip Boy well, but he's pretty certain it's a 6 and not an 8 because there's still some sunlight left. Ren notices him struggling to read the print on the tiny computer and nudges him, offers him a plain black pair of glasses.

"I didn't forget you're fucking blind up close. Took these off a raider. I don't know if they're the kind of reading glasses you need, but I can try to find another pair if those don't work," she says, watching him clean the lenses with the inside of his jacket.

Leo tests them once they're clean enough. The numbers and letters on the Pip Boy glow back clearly, and he can finally read the little note Preston left in regards to the settlement that needs help. He's also able to see it's called Tenpines Bluff. Mm. Leo remembers a family who lived in that general area before the war, clients of his at one point for a nasty case of accidental vehicular manslaughter. Or, rather, he helped get them a plea bargain to tack on the word "accidental". They went by the surname of Tenpine. Could be their descendants.

It's also much later than he thought, now that the numbers are in focus. It's nearly seven, far too late to wander away if he wants to get to bed at a decent time. It's also getting colder. Dew is starting to settle on the mostly dead grass and he's not willing to deal with wet feet because he had a case of wanderlust that couldn't wait until morning.

Ren coaxes him into going back to the Red Rocket for the night instead of staying in Sanctuary, offers the bed in their home to the Longs. For privacy, to grieve. After hearing the sad story of their very loved child dying, she's a little more sympathetic to Marcy being a giant bitch. It's understandable.

Ever excited to be on the move, Dogmeat tries to follow them. Leo sends him back with Ren's blessing. Neither are willing to put him in any more danger today, though having a guard dog watching over them for the night would probably be nice.

In the back room of the old gas station, a single ugly yellow sleeping bag is pushed up against a desk housing a terminal. It's going to be a small fit, moreso than the mattress from last night, but it's getting cold enough that neither mind in the slightest. Body heat is best heat. Still, he chides her in jest.

" _That_ is the bed you've secured for the night? That dingy little thing? One of your tits could barely fit in there, let alone both of our bodies."

"Okay, first of all," Ren says back in an angry tone. She stops in the doorway with a tire under her arm and she's grinning, so her can tell she isn't actually mad. "First of fucking all, you're a bitch. Second of all, if it's not to your liking, there's plenty of cold garage for you to sleep in. I even brought a couple of blankets, so you can't complain about having to lay on the bare floor."

There's a smile on his mouth by the time she's finished, and he nudges her to put the tire back. "We can clean up tomorrow. Come spend some time with me before we're too tired."

Neither complain. He doesn't complain when she grips at his bruised, aching back, and she doesn't complain about the cold seeping through the sleeping bag and blankets. They hold tight to the other, keeping warm and staying as close as their bodies can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally gonna have him just toss the minigun to the side and just start fucking knifing people, but my BF (who technically made Leo) said it was more likely for him to use it as a club, so.


	4. Interlude: Pregnancy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note to self; Shaun was born in April, conceived in September
> 
> Both abortion and adoption are talked about in this one, as well as attempted murder of an infant
> 
> Interludes are just things that don't really fit anywhere else but add information to the story. I've hinted a lot that they don't wanna be parents and hopefully this give a lil insight.

The week starts about as well as any other; Ren gets sick with the flu the day before the Halloween get-together at the law firm Leo works for. She wakes up and barely makes it to the toilet before all of her dinner makes a reappearance, and frankly tater tot casserole and cheesecake do _not_ taste nearly as good coming back up.

Leo wakes up by the time she's dry heaving, unable to bring anything else up. He gets her some water and Pepto, and brings her a blanket. They both sleep nude, and while he had time to find some pajama pants, she had to bolt naked so that she didn't paint the floor.

She sits in his lap, shivering with fever and blinking back the residual tears leftover from puking her guts out. Her whole body aches, and Leo politely adverts his eyes when the tears start up for real. When her stomach finally settles enough and her eyes are dry, he picks her up and carries her back to bed. He also leaves a triple bagged trashcan next to her side, just in case her belly decided that water is also an enemy.

In the morning, he makes several phone calls to clients, apologizes and moves some dates around. The words "flu" and "contagious" seem to work wonders at convincing the more persistent ones into rescheduling with him. The office is much easier, he just takes the day off and tells them that he won't be present at the party due to a sick wife.

Ren's okay when she wakes up, but by noon her stomach rejects everything put in it and the fever returns with a vengeance. He spends the day taking care of her, trying to keep her hydrated and the fever down as best he can.

She stays sick as a dog for two weeks, and he can't take that much time off, so he keeps soft and bland foods made for her to reheat during the day. The evenings are spent in bed idly going over casework while she dozes against his side, running warm and sweating on him.

Her periods are irregular at best, and she hasn't had one in almost six months. When she hasn't stopped puking after three weeks, she takes a test just to ease her mind. She buys them in bulk, and figures she should use some before they expire.

Leo comes home from a friends house that afternoon and finds the living room empty. Figures Ren must be napping. He certainly doesn't mind, it hopefully gives him time to rub one out in the bathroom before she wakes up. Three weeks without getting any has his libido skyrocketing. He closes the door behind himself, untucks his shirt and starts to undo his belt.

Sitting in the counter are four pregnancy tests, which aren't an uncommon sight. Ren isn't on any kind of birth control and doesn't have regular cycles, nor does he use protection when they have sex. He's the one who insisted on buying the bulk box back when she still did bi-monthly testing, because he was sick of the drug store cashiers constantly asking if they were trying to conceive since he bought her tests so fucking often.

What is uncommon, however, is that they're not in the trash. And that there's so many. And that she poured the urine out, but didn't flush it. And the single page of instructions left neatly unfolded on the other corner of the sink, showing how to read the tests.

One line means negative, he knows that much from seeing all of her old tests in the trashcan. Hm. Strangest thing is, all of the ones left out on the counter have two dark, distinct lines. The instructions say that two distinct lines means…

Her eyes are red rimmed when he comes into the room. She meets his gaze when he kneels in front of her, and it breaks his cold heart to see those big green eyes teary and bloodshot.

"We'll figure this out," he says softly, for lack of anything better to say.

Leo spends the better part of an hour comforting her while she cries. He's no fool, knows damn well that they aren't happy tears. While he's always been neutral on it, she was very staunch on her decision to not have kids. She used to cite all the reasons not to. Too many people already, she's too mentally ill, doesn't want the burden, etc. Now she doesn't use excuses, just flat says she doesn't want them.

But still. He knows she's finicky.

"Take a few days, think about it. Decide what you want to do and let me know. I'll stand by you no matter what decision you make," he tells her, and kisses her forehead when the waterworks start back up.

  


  


  


  


  


He takes a half day at work, so that she doesn't have to go to the appointment alone. When he comes in, Ren's not ready to go. In fact, she's still in her pajamas at the table, crying her eyes out for the thousandth time that week. Leo sets the bag of heavy duty pads and his briefcase by the couch, closes the door and crosses to her.

"Are you alright?" He asks tentatively, smoothing his hand across her back. Her shoulders shake, and he can't understand what she says the first time.

"I can't do it," she repeats, hands fisted into her pajamas pants. "I- I just can't."

Well, shit. He's definitely not going to push her into it, but she's emotional as fuck and may not be thinking straight. Pulling a chair next to her, he sits and puts an arm around her. "Are you... Sure?" he starts, trying to be delicate about it. "Either way, it's a very permanent thing.

She waits until she's calmed down some to speak. Ren rests her head against his shoulder. "When we were in the military, way back when we were still fuck buddies that had no feelings for each other, I got pregnant. I didn't tell you, because there was no point. I knew I wasn't going to keep it. It was hell, but I managed to find the time off to get an abortion."

He does some quick mental math. They'd have a small child at this point in time, maybe three or four years old. Probably definitely wouldn't be married, Leo would be a Weekend Dad with a crazy bitch that he couldn't even call an ex carting their kid back and forth every Friday and Sunday evening. Things wouldn't have worked out had she kept it.

"What I'm saying is, I've done it before. I know what to expect. But the circumstances are so different this time. We're married, and in love, and our lives are stable and happy," and shit, the tears are starting again. "I can't go through with it, Leo."

"I'm not asking you to," he says softly, pressing a kiss to her temple. "I've told you already, I'll be here no matter what. If you want to keep it, then so be it."

  


  


  


  


  


They keep it a secret until week 20. Ren in particular decides that the gender will be a surprise, and lets everyone debate over it once they get the ultrasound pictures in. The general consensus is pretty even, with a slight leaning towards a girl. She's certain it's a girl, but she makes sure to decorate the nursery with all the primary colors. Though she's got a feeling that if she has a boy, he won't particularly mind if she puts him in a pink hat or a daughter in blue shoes.

Leo doesn't weigh in. They'll find out when they find out, no need to fawn over a black and white picture and try to discern the genitals. He instead focuses on his wife, makes sure that she still knows she's hot shit.

He worships every stretch mark, smooths his hands over the extra weight that goes straight to her ass and thighs. Massages her sore breasts and only teases her a little when they start to leak. Even when her sex drive tanks for a solid three months, he still lets her know every day that she's gorgeous and welcome to sit on his face whenever she wants to get off.

Once she's given him permission, he shows her off. Takes her to all kinds of formal events that have her dolled up to the nines, with a tight dress accenting every curve of her body. She's stunning, glowing, and even strangers make sure to tell her.

Really, Leo never understood the appeal to pregnant bodies until it was his own wife. Sitting atop of him, belly swollen and streaked with pink stretch marks, hair loose and wild, looking like a fucking  _ _goddess__. It's got to be some deep-seated primal instincts that makes him want to simultaneously fuck her into incoherency and wrap her up and protect her from everything. It drives him wild. __She__ drives him wild.

Still. He gets an eerie sense of deja vu when he comes home late one evening to find her sobbing at the kitchen table.

She's only five weeks out from her due date, and from the way she's crying, dread fills his gut. Something has to be wrong. Something either wrong with her or the baby. He should have gone to her doctor's appointment with her today, fuck, she's had to stew in bad news all day without him-

"What happened?" Leo asks, curling his fingers into her hair.

Ren blubbers out something that he can't make out, and she has to repeat it at least four times until he understands what's coming out of her mouth.

"I made a mistake."

He soothes her until the crying dies down and she can speak coherently. The appointment went fine today, nothing is wrong, she may deliver a little early because she's already dilated 2cm. That's not what's wrong. She tells him which a strained voice that she's made a mistake and she's very, very certain that she doesn't want to have this baby anymore.

Leo's grown fond of the thought of being a father, and hearing her say that throws him off. But ultimately, it's her body and he's not going to force her to do something she doesn't want to do. She understands that she has no choice but to deliver but she doesn't want to keep it anymore.

"What do you want to do?" he asks, noting that Ren's gone from calling the baby 'she' to 'it'.

She's four weeks from her due date when he comes home, tells her that Johansen from work will have adoption paperwork drawn up by tomorrow, the day after at the latest. They'll sign it, give up their rights. The hardest part will be telling everyone what happened when they ask to see their baby.

She complains of extremely painful Braxton Hicks contractions that evening, and doesn't believe him when he tries to reason that maybe it's real labor. It's too soon, she argues, the doctor gave her at least two more weeks. She also discloses that the contractions have been going on for almost a full day, and really he wants to shake his wife for being so dense. Ren denies that it's real labor in the same breath that her water breaks, then quietly asks him to help her shower so that they can get ready to leave.

  


  


  


  


  


There's a baby in her arms within an hour and a half of arriving at the hospital. She's a month early delivering and her doctor isn't there for the night. The doctor on call ignores the birth plan set up by Ren and her doctor, instead trying to get her to just lay down and deliver in the traditional hospital way. Both the doctor and the nurses are rude when she refuses, and one nurse quietly threatens to restrain her if she doesn't comply.

Leo doesn't like to threaten people with the nature of his job often. He knows he could lose said job doing so. But he stares at the nurse with something cold in his eyes and asks her to repeat herself. One of his acquaintances at the law firm is the best medical malpractice lawyers in the Massachusetts Commonwealth and would love to hear that. The woman pales immediately, and Leo doesn't see her for the rest of the night. He'll be dammed if he lets anyone threaten his wife when she's at her most vulnerable.

Ren refuses all drugs, though it's pretty much the worst pain she's ever been in in her life. Hooked up to all the monitors and IVs, she stands at the side of the bed, leaning over it and grunting into the pillow through the worst of her quickening contractions.

Somewhere around the hour mark, she turns to him with fire in her eyes. "If you ever do this to me again, I'll fucking kill you," she threatens, teeth grit through the pain of her contractions. "I'll handcuff you to the bed and slowly kill you with the rustiest, dullest knife you own."

"Darling, if I ever do this to you again, I'll take myself out," he replies, crossing his legs. She hasn't asked him to get up, and he feels he's a little safer back here. At least she won't be pulling on his hair or breaking his hand to get through her pain.

"Murder-suicide," she grunts out. He thinks it's supposed to be a question.

"Anything you'd like, my love."

The nurses look immensely uncomfortable, but say nothing other than asking how far apart her contractions are.

Soon enough, she's muttering that it's time. The nurses are unsure how to proceed with her, but Leo puts his hair up, takes his jacket off, rolls his sleeves to his elbows. Christ, the one day he decides to wear a white button up instead of a black one, and his wife is probably going to get blood and afterbirth on it. While the nurses try to get the doctor prepped and ready (fuck, this hospital is terrible, her should have convinced her to use a different one), he uses the foaming antiseptic mounted on the wall and cleans from his hands to his elbows. The birth plan specified that if her doctor wasn't available for whatever reason, Leo was delivering his own child. Dr. Yasumi isn't anywhere in sight, so he kneels down behind Ren.

Knowing it was a possibility he'd be in this position, he did research in his own time, watched educational birth videos on the terminal at home. It's... Not simple, but not thoroughly complicated either. Just has to walk her through it, time her pushes with the contractions. Really, he's just terrified that he's going to drop the baby somehow.

But the baby comes, and Leo smiles at the ugly little purple thing in his hands and tells Ren it's a boy. She sags, exhausted and ready to finally lay down. They suction the fluid from his mouth and his cries come loud and clear while Leo cuts the cord. She holds him for a while before they bathe him, she was taught that babies need skin to skin time as soon as they come out. Then he's whisked off for a bath. Ren looks dazed throughout all of it.

The nurse that deals with them after is much kinder than the others. She thinks it's the cutest thing that they don't have a name picked out for him, as Ren was thoroughly convinced he was going to be a girl. She leaves to give them time together, to decide a name and let them all bond. Ren looks like she'd rather be anywhere else.

"Renee," Leo starts slowly, "If... If you still don't want to go through with keeping him-"

She cuts him off. Tells him it's too late even though it's not. She won't deal with the looks, the pity, the judgment. Sends him out to the vending machine when he tries to reason with her that yes, hospitals are safe havens and she's allowed to give him up. He may not quite want to give the boy away, but he's not going to make Renee go through with this if she doesn't want to.

But he backs off. He's not going to push her. The vending machine doesn't have the candy she wants, and he figures two minutes is enough for her to cool down some. He'll just ask her what else she wants.

Ren has a pillow over the baby's face when he comes back. Leo rips it away, scoops him up and make sure he's okay. The color hasn't changed on his face, and he's not even crying, just breathing and sleeping away. She had to have just done it. When Leo looks to her, she looks like she's a million miles away, hasn't even moved from the position he found her in. He's not even sure if she knows she was doing it.

"We'll call him Shaun," she decides, voice sounding as far off as her gaze. She decides in that empty tone what the rest of his name will look like. And when they fill out the birth certificate, he writes "Shaun Léonce Valant-Antipov" in his nicest handwriting.

He makes a mental note to get some books on postpartum depression.

  


  


  


  


  


By the time Shaun is a week old, the novelty of being a father has worn off. Leo genuinely hates it as much as Ren does, dislikes every aspect of parenthood. And it's not the shitty diapers, the two hours of sleep a night, his wife crying because breastfeeding hurts. He's dealt with worse things in his life. He just doesn't like it.

He kind of regrets not pushing her into giving him up at the hospital.


	5. Boston Commons/Swan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, extremely graphic violence and death

"We heading to Diamond City today?" Ren asks, bleary-eyed and half dressed. It's only 4:30, a little earlier than they usually get up, but they also went to bed ridiculously early last night. Yesterday involved a lot of cleaning and tedious manual labor, so she crashed at the first available opportunity. Which happened to be somewhere around before dark. At least it all paid off, the Red Rocket is fucking spotless.

"Suddenly eager to find Shaun?" Leo retorts, not looking up from cleaning her shotgun. His hair is up, and though his eyes are puffy like he's just awoken, she can tell he's been up for a while.

She doesn't say anything to that, and he doesn't bother to acknowledge her. The sounds of him working is comforting to her, in some weird way. It reminds her of laying in bed with him before all of this happened, idly dozing while he occasionally flipped through his case notes and muttered to himself. Ren leans against the door frame and closes her eyes for most a moment. She almost expects to feel him reach over and run his fingers through her hair, but he's too far away. Yawning once, loud, she stretches.

"I was thinking since we're up early enough and have nothing to do, we could go ahead and make the trip."

He doesn't answer right away, so she nudges past his seat to grab an open can of water on the table. It's Leo's, probably, because she keeps the place clean and they don't waste purified water. She drinks some, swishes a tiny bit to get the bad taste out of her mouth. They haven't managed to find any unused toothbrushes yet, so her mouth is pretty foul. Rubbing toothpaste in with her finger just isn't the same.

She paces to the other end of the room and spits the water out the window, making a face at her own breath. Shivering at the late November cold breezing in, she watches out at the expanse of foggy trees across the way. They really need to board these windows up to keep the cold out. And to hide their well-furnished abode. All this open space with clean furniture and weapons stuffed into every available space just screams 'rob me'.

They've been out of the vault for about a month now. Her 28th birthday passed with little fuss early in November, considering they took care of the Tenpines' problem at the Corvega factory that day. It was a challenge, but they did it and brought back as much salvage as they could carry. They made out of there like thieves. Leo particularly got ahold of a tire iron with a blade attached, and he hasn't put it down since.

Nether even realized her birthday had passed until she saw that it was already the seventh. Leo apologized for not noticing on the sixth, and presented her with a mutfruit when they awoke. It had a flaming twig sticking out, and he mentioned that he couldn't find any candles that were small enough, so the stick had to do. She laughed until there were tears in her eyes, couldn't even blow the candle out because she was sobbing with laughter at the sheer absurdity of it. It was a sweet, unexpected surprise from him.

"If anything, I need to do some trading," Ren tells him when he still fails to answer. "I need more than the handful of bullets that Trudy and Carla can offer."

"Switch to shitty pipe guns." His voice is just flat enough that she _almost_ takes him seriously.

"Fuck off."

Ren can see the faintest hint of a smile curling at his lip as he begins to reassemble her weapon. His little handgun seems to already be finished, at least. Just how long has be been up? "Start packing, then. Bring enough caps for food and a room, since I'm certain this will be that kind of trip. Bring whatever you want to trade."

"You remember that huge chem stash we found?" Ren asks, heading back into their room. "I'm selling that shit. And when we get back, no more fucking around. We really need to board the windows up. I'm sick of having to constantly bring Codsworth over here to guard the place while we go out adventuring."

Leo rolls his eyes. "Tell you what, I'll pay Sturges to do it while we're gone."

She scoffs as she begins stuffing essentials into her own pack. "So that you can get out of doing it?"

"Yes, and also to get you to stop bitching at me."

"The bitching will _never_ stop."

He makes a face as he gets to his feet. "Don't I fucking know."

  


  


  


  


"I forgot to pack the toothpaste," Ren says apologetically as they head down one of the old roads, knowing they’re _way_ too far away to turn back and head to Trudy’s to grab some.

Leo shrugs. “Oh well. If Diamond City is as big as it’s claimed to be, I imagine someone there can sell us another tube. Possibly some toothbrushes too.”

“Yeah, alright. That’s fair.”

The area they’re in is relatively devoid of life, minus a few raiders here and there. Ren scowls at her Pip-Boy, tracking their location on her map. Diamond City is made around he ruins of Fenway Park, she’s heard, but the location on her map doesn’t look like it’s anywhere near where they should be. Stepping out into the open area, all she can see are giant buildings and an old, scummy pond.

“Leo? I think we went too far,” she tells him, utilizing the shitty touch-screen option to drag the map around. So they’re here… and Diamond City is way behind them to the west. Fuck. She should have followed that map they got from the Gorski place a little closer.

“I told you that was the bridge we needed to cross,” he points out, pulling his reading glasses on to check his own map.

“Okay, but one, fuck you, Two, there was a wrecked boat underneath of it _crawling_ with raiders, and the bridge itself wasn’t even connected anymore. Tell me how we were supposed to cross that, Leo.”

Leo deadpans, “With skill.”

Ren huffs in annoyance, heading off in another direction. Up ahead is what she thinks is the Massachusetts State House, and checking her pre-marked pre-war map, she’s right. She marks it down on her current map and wanders the perimeter of the pond, eyeing all the old swan boats and checking out the old landmarks. The Boylston Club, she remembers that one. Fancy place where senators and rich people came to masturbate with their money or something. At least, that’s what she assumes they did.

“What’s that in the pond?” Leo asks, drawing her out of her sight-seeing. He points at a ruined swan boat that doesn’t seem to be moving.

“A boat?”

“No shit, Ren. Why isn’t it moving? Debris usually float around.”

Ren shrugs. “I don’t fuckin’ know. You’re apparently the debris expert, you tell me?”

Shaking his head, Leo heads over to the wrought-iron fence to get a closer look while she wanders off in a different direction, resuming her sight-seeing. There’s a tank left open and motionless near an old subway station, Park Street she thinks, and she heads around to investigate it. There’s a crate with some random shit in it and she takes it just to have some extra things to sell.

As she’s heading out, a sign catches her eye.

DANGER SWAN, it reads.

Ren frowns and paces up the street, going to where she left Leo. That sign… She doesn’t like it. What’s so dangerous abut the old swan boats? Tetanus? She’s just coming around the side of Park Street station when a roar echos though the Common. Something big, ugly like a super mutant and way too big emerges from the water, shouting at the top of its lungs. Leo is still in the water, staring up at the behemoth creature as it catches sight of him.

“Leo?!” she shouts as it bellows again.

“Go!” he calls back as he snaps out of his surprise, turning and sprinting as fast as the knee-deep water will let him. A boulder of concrete and rebar crashes just next to him, encouraging Leo to push himself a little harder.

He follows his wife, only a few seconds behind her when she ducks into the shelter of the subway station’s entryway. The two of them back towards the door, keeping their eyes firm on the opening. The ground shakes harder and harder as the creature approaches.

It can’t get inside, it seems. The behemoth tries to duck under the opening, but the debris it wears on its back gets caught, preventing it from actually coming after them. Small mercies, but they’re not stupid enough to think it won’t get through eventually. The anchor it’s swinging will definitely bring the building down if it gets enough good hits on the brick.

“If you have any grievances to air or anything to admit before we die, do it now,” Ren tells him, taking a molotov off of her belt, patting her other side for her lighter. The panic is evident in her voice.

“I once considered murdering you simply because I couldn’t handle your shitty attitude,” Leo replies, not missing a beat. He pulls his handgun off of his hip.

Ren nods, lighting the cloth in the bottle. “Remember when Shaun was crying for like a week straight and you avoided coming home during and I was left mostly alone? I considered killing both of you and then myself.”

“I would have deserved it,” he agrees, checking that his gun is loaded before unloading on the beast’s midsection. It futilely swats at them and shouts in pain, but doesn’t back away. “That was a dick move on my part.”

Her molotov explodes across its chest, and the beast roars louder. The building above them trembles fiercely as the behemoth takes another swing with the anchor, Dust flies, and Ren lets out a squeak of fear.

“Fuck, okay, take my shotgun,” she tells him, trying to unstrap it from herself. “It’s the strongest gun we have. You shoot it and I’ll pelt it with fire. Deal?”

“Deal,” he agrees, assisting her on getting it off as a boulder bounces off of the edge of the building. Running out of time, they are.

It’s a pain in the ass to continually reload the double-barrel, and the thing doesn’t even seem fazed as it’s pumped full of bullets and showered in glass and fire. Ren dares to get closer and aims more at the behemoth’s face, and it’s less than pleased to be met with a face full of pain. It swats uselessly, temporarily blinded, and Leo takes the opportunity to dart forward and get a few good slashes at its legs. He narrowly avoids getting punted back, and drags Ren back into safety just in time for her to almost be taken out by the anchor.

“Is this thing ever going to die?” Ren asks, taking the last molotov. “I don’t have any more of these and I feel like it’s too dangerous to use the grenades in such close proximity.”

“I’ll give you the gun after you throw that,” Leo tells her, reloading the shotgun. “I trust myself with the grenades.”

Once again, the behemoth clubs the side of the building, making it shiver and spray dust. Another boulder of concrete explodes too close, sending more shit into their field of vision. Ren chunks the molotov, and while the creature staggers back with a roar, it doesn’t seem too affected. _Fuck_. It’s got at least a dozen shotgun wounds oozing blood, lots of terrible burns and cuts from the glass and it’s not even slowing down.

The shotgun is shoved into her hands, and she barely gets a decent hold on it before hearing the click of a grenade pin being pulled. He tosses it between the creature’s legs and it rolls too far, doesn’t do shit. She pumps more lead into it, hoping to fuck Leo doesn’t blow them up.

“Just use your gun!” she demands after he’s used up most of his grenades. The behemoth is slowing a little bit, finally, but it’s still coming at them with force

“Where’s that laser musket?” he retorts, sounding irritated as he works to get his hunting rifle untangled from his pack. “It would be pretty fucking useful right now, but I’m betting you left it behind.”

It is indeed at home. She doesn’t admit it, just creeps as close as she dares and aims higher. He takes the opposite wall and does the same.

“Sometimes I wanna start hitting you and not stop,” she calls across the way as her trembling hands slide two more slugs in. Airing grievances, right? Fuck, she’s almost out of shotgun shells. “Honey, I daydream about beating your face in more often than should be healthy.”

“I sometimes want to watch you turn blue under my hands,” Leo replies, reloading his own weapon. “You raise my ire so much that I have to force myself not to strangle you at least once a week, my love.”

“This isn’t healthy, is it?” Ren asks as she shoots, once, twice, and reloads.

“Probably not.” He empties the magazine and once again reloads his own weapon. “I have a very stupid plan formulating and I’d like you to hear me out.”

“Yeah?” She drops the shotgun and takes out her own handgun. Shotgun is too hot to strap back onto herself without getting burned.

“You run. Distract it. It’ll get close and sever its Achilles's tendon with my tire iron. If it can’t walk, we’ll have a much easier go of this.”

Ren shakes her head and unloads the full clip where the things junk should be. It bleeds everywhere and screeches in pain, but _still_ isn’t too bothered. “You realize I’m way slower than you and actually pretty likely to die,?

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

She glares over at him, and sees there’s a poor attempt of a humorous smile on his face. Reloading, she focuses her sight back on the beast. “For real, babe, I could die.”

Leo sighs, spending his entire magazine on the creature. “It’s the only plan I can see getting us out of here. If we retreat into the subway station, it’ll still be waiting here when we come out, I bet. You’re not strong enough to homerun swing through that thick of a tendon,” He shares a long look with her.

After a moment, she puts her gun away. “If I die it’s your fault,” Ren tells him, darting across the empty space to kiss him. A rock crashes through and breaks into large chunks of debris.

“I know.” He’s already taking the bladed tire iron off of his person, readying it as she prepares herself to bolt. “Go left and circle around.”

The creature stupidly looks between its legs as she bolts through them, giving her a few extra seconds of a head start. It lumbers heavily as it turns around, and soon enough the ground is shaking as it runs after her. Ren weaves through the pond’s grassy area, buying more time for her and Leo as adrenaline runs through her.

God, this better fucking work.

She hears another set of footsteps echoing through the empty area while she struggles to keep herself upright while the behemoth causes the ground to jolt with its every step. The footsteps keep a steady pace towards her. At least he isn’t using her as bait to safely get himself out, it seems. Her husband may be a dick sometimes, but he loves her enough to not sacrifice her.

There’s another unholy roar behind her, and just a moment later the ground shakes so hard she loses her balance and falls. Ren lands on her hands and knees on the pavement, narrowly avoiding smashing her face into the concrete. Oh _fuck, fuck fuck fuck she’s gonna die-_

The anchor goes skittering past her on her right, drawing sparks until it unceremoniously crashes into a building. The behemoth shouts, snarls, makes generally pissed off noises, but doesn’t seem to be coming any closer. She dares sit up and look behind herself.

Leo swings at it with a snarl on his face, catching its fingers and hands with the blade as it tries to grab it him and drag itself forward. Her husband is sprayed with blood, as is the concrete behind the creature’s leg. She can see over the mound of its body that its right ankle is soaked in red and hanging at a very wrong looking angle. Oh fuck, he did it!

Though her hands are raw and bleeding from catching herself, she gets her handgun back out and pops a few rounds into its face. “You got this handled long enough for me to get my shotgun?” she asks, watching it keep trying to drag itself forward with a severe lack of fingers.

“Go,” Leo grunts, throwing himself into another swing.

It goes a lot easier with it on the ground. Still brutal and filthy, but easy. She runs out of shotgun shells by the time he’s sure it’s weak enough not to buck him off. He comes up close its side and brings the blade down hard on the back of the behemoth’s neck. It shouts, but the sounds grow quieter as Leo hacks away. There’s a disgusting crunch after a few good swings, and the beats whole body immediately goes limp. He keeps up with the heavy blows until it’s halfway decapitated.

“Wanted to make sure it was dead,” he tells her, wiping the mess of blood away from his face. “No need for the dumb thing to suffer.”

Numbly, Ren nods. She walks in the direction of the pond and rinses her hands, mindful of her Geiger counter spitting static. Leo joins her a moment later and washes his face off, the water dripping pink off of his skin.

“Well. Let’s go see what it’s got,” he suggests after looking at her skinned palms. No need to waste a stim on it.

It has a lot of junk in its makeshift pockets, and a few pieces of armor. Leo’s happy with what he has on, but Ren swaps out one of her arm guards for a nicer one. She takes a few of the swan heads for the novelty, but is careful not to overload her pack. Elbow deep on the loincloth, Leo stops when his hand connects with something solid. Metal. Pulling whatever it is out, he finds a fist-shaped weapon with concrete and short spikes of rebar tied onto it.

It’s… very nice, actually. Very punchy looking. He likes it. He likes it so much, in fact, that he slides it right on. He swings his fist at the air, and feel rather satisfied with the sound it makes. The pneumatic hiss and the stray sparks are _nice_.

“Let’s double back now that we’re on the right side of the water,” Leo suggests, examining his new power fist, and Ren doesn’t even have the energy to agree out loud. She just wants to get the fuck out of here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! So long story short, this has been on hiatus for a few months because I was having a lot of trouble making the story work. It was really hard to hash out the storyline when I was doing literally all of this on a phone. I had already written 20k of this on my phone, and I was getting burnt out from the strain of it. But I've got my boyfriend's computer now, and now I'm getting a lot more writing done. I've added at least 5k in actual story in just the past few days, which is quite a bit for me!
> 
> So, since I'm getting more work done at a steadier pace, I'm hoping I'll have content coming out more steadily. Anyhow, I hope you guys have enjoyed so far, and thank you to everyone who has stuck by for so long!


	6. Diamond City

Following the signs and avoiding the heavy sounds of gunfire and shouting, the two make it to a relatively safe looking path to the city. Leo and Ren pass what they presume to be security guards, dressed up in fucking umpire gear. Some even have the masks. Most give Leo’s blood-soaked appearance a long look and mutter something in his direction about not causing any trouble, which is promptly ignored. He’ll start trouble if he damn well feels like it. They’re kinder to Ren, with her exhausted appearance, telling her to follow the signs, she’s almost there.

The entry gate is… something else. It’s huge, painted an ugly yellow, probably weighs several tons. And it’s firmly shut, blocking off what they assume is the only way in. Unless they want to climb the wall, but frankly neither of them have the patience to try.

There’s also a woman out front when they arrive, shouting at some sort of intercom. Leo holds onto Ren’s arm, motioning for her to stay quiet. He wants to hear what’s going on.

While the reply from the speaker is too quiet to hear, the woman’s voice echos loud and clear. “Agh... You open this gate right now, Danny Sullivan! I live here. You can't just lock me out!” She sighs heavily after, rubbing at her face. There’s no further answer from the com. “Danny!”

They hang back for almost five minutes, watching the woman throw an absolute fit and shout at the intercom, demanding entrance. Feet stomping, shouting, plenty of profanity A tantrum that would impress the most foolhardy of toddlers. At one point she wordlessly shouts at it, and a startled yelp is audible from the other side, but still, no reply.

“I’m getting tired of this,” Ren tells him in a quiet voice. It’s cold out, for one, but the sun is beating down on her neck an is unpleasant as hell. She just wants to get inside and have a drink. Alcohol or water will do.

Leo shrugs. “Wanna ask Miss Loudmouth to share the speaker?”

The woman is still shouting at the tiny box, seemingly unaware of the two people behind her. “Open uuuup! I can wait all day, Danny.”

Finally, there’s a loud sigh from the other end. “I got orders not to let you in, Ms. Piper. I'm sorry. I'm just doing my job.”

Doing his job by keeping people out? “Seems like a real unfriendly place,” Ren mutters, watching her husband nod in agreement out of the corner of her eye.

“Just doing your job?” the woman- Piper?- asks indignantly. She scoffs. “Protecting Diamond City means keeping me out, is that it? "Oh look, it's the scary reporter!" Boo!”

Leo hums to himself, scratching at the back of his neck. “Illegal eviction? Not my area of expertise, but my lawyer senses are tingling.”

The voice from the other end of the intercom sighs once more. “I'm sorry, but Mayor McDonough's really steamed, Piper. Sayin' that article you wrote was all lies. The whole city's in a tizzy.”

“Stop playing around, Danny!” Once again, Piper stomps her foot. “I'm standing out in the open here, for crying out loud!”

When she receives no answer, she lets out a humorless laugh, looking around like she can’t believe this is happening. Piper does a double take when she catches sight of the couple. Her eyes go wide, something mischievous coming over her face, and she vigorously motions for them to come closer.

“Hey! You. You two want into Diamond City, right?”

Ren shrugs as they get closer. “I mean, that’s kind of why we’ve been waiting here.”

Piper grins, motioning them closer to the speaker. “Alright, shh. Play along. What was that? You said you're a trader up from Quincy? You have enough supplies to keep the general store stocked for a whole _month_?” Her voice is heavily over-exaggerated, probably to encourage the two of them to play along, but it makes her con blatantly obvious. Still, she continues. “You hear that, Danny? You gonna open the gate and let us in? Or are you going to be the one talking to crazy Myrna about losing out on all this supply?”

There’s a static-y sigh from the intercom, an a faint mutter of ‘shit’. “Geez, all right. No need to make it personal, Piper. Give me a minute.”

The giant, ugly gate makes a lot of ugly noises as it makes it’s slow ascension upward. Piper smirks at the two of them, motioning inward. “Better head inside quick before ole' Danny catches on to the bluff.”

Leo gives her a curt nod, waving his hand in a gesture of ‘you first’. Ren sticks close to his side, trailing a few feet behind her.

A bulbous man in a tacky tweed suit waits inside with a redheaded guard, looking angry while the guard looks more embarrassed. They presume the guard is Danny.

“You devious, rabble-rousing slanderer!” the suited man shouts, face red. “The.. the level of dishonesty in that paper of yours! I'll have that printer scrapped for parts!”

Ren shakes her head, nudging Leo and pointing to a small alcove where she can see the cherry of a cigarette. He nods, watching her go. He’d much rather stand here and watch this unfold.

“Give you a couple caps for a cigarette,” Ren offers to the bald guard inside, the cherry glowing bright in the reflection of his sunglasses. Silently, he offers her one but refuses her caps. He’s even kind enough to light it for her, and the two smoke in silence, listening to the argument erupting.

“Oooh, that a statement, Mr. McDonough? "Tyrant mayor shuts down the press?"” Leo watches her split back into that mischievous grin. “Why don't we ask the newcomer? You support the news? 'Cause the mayor's threatening to throw free speech in the dumpster.”

Leo shrugs his shoulder. Being a lawyer and all, he tells the man, “Always believed in freedom of the press.”

The mayor stutters and scrambled for a response, looking momentarily startled at the blood-soaked appearance of this new stranger. “Oh, I didn't mean to bring you into this argument, good sir. No no no... You, ah… look like Diamond City material.”

Ren has to stifle a laugh.

Trying to recover, the mayor tells him, “Welcome to the great green jewel of the Commonwealth. Safe. Happy. A fine place to come, spend your money, settle down. Don't let this _muckraker_ here tell you otherwise, alright?”

Piper rolls her eyes and scoffs, and Leo resists the urge to do the same. He can smell a snake anywhere, and this man gives off the scent like he’s done nothing but roll in deceit.

“My wife and I are looking for someone,” Leo tells the mayor before he can begin bickering with Piper again. “Being the mayor and all, I’d presume you know where to point us?”

Immediately nervous, the mayor shakes his head. Strange. It was a simple question, but the man seems on edge. “I'm sorry, I don't have time for questions-”

“A mayor of a great city must know everyone,” Leo replies. He’s not taking no for an answer. Firmly, in a tone that makes it clear he isn’t fucking around, Leo asks, “ _Who can help me_?”

The tone must have overdone it, because he can hear the shift of every guard in the room coming to attention. The mayor is sweating bullets now, flushed in the face and the pits of his suit soaking through. Fear leaks off of him. Why is he so afraid of such an easy question?

“W- Well, there is one private citizen. Nick Valentine. A... detective of sorts, who specializes in tracking people down. Usually for debts or whatnot.”

That’s better. “Mm. Thank you. That’s all I needed.” Turning his head, he calls, “Renee?”

Ren stubs her cigarette out on the brick wall, almost burnt down to the filter. She nudges the guard. “Thanks for the smoke.”

He grunts. “No problem. Welcome to the, uh, great green jewel.” He says it like he doesn’t believe it, smoke filtering out of his nose and mouth as he speaks. She doesn’t blame him. That mayor is crocked full of shit and she doesn’t trust it one bit.

 

 

 

 

 

Inside is a lot more different than Ren remembers. She only visited here once when she was young, in the blurry time after her parents died, but she remembers what Fenway park looked like before. Now, a city has sprouted around the inside walls like mushrooms, precariously stacked on top of each other. There’s a giant building right in the center, pouring smoke out like crazy. She would liken it to a chimney, but that’s probably what it is.

Piper brushes past the two of them as they stand at the stop of the stairs overlooking the city, mentions for them to come down to her office later for an interview.

“So the name was…?” Ren asks, watching Piper as she walks. Even with that coat on, she’s still got an ass.

Leo, similarly distracted, tells her, “Valentine, I think. Nick Valentine. A detective of sorts.”

“Don’t like the name,” she says, making a face. It’s a real strong coincidence, but…

“I don’t either. Might be a descendant, however. I never personally met the man, so if it’s somehow a ghoulified detective, then, well, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

The town seems safe enough for them to dare hold hands, using their gun hands. They pass a chapel, and what’s assumed to be Piper’s place. She talks excitedly with a kid that looks similar to her. Must be her sister, Piper’s definitely too young to have a kid that age.

The reek of meat tells of a butcher’s shop nearby, and a man happily chats with a client while cutting her heir into a terrible bob. Good to know there’s a hair stylist. Ren’s ready to cut most of this shit off, and Leo’s needing a trim.

Ahead, the big building with smoke pouring out appears to be a food shop, that also appears to only be serving noodles. It smells fucking good. There had been a good ramen shop that opened up in Lexington, just before the bombs dropped, and between work and a new baby, they hadn’t had time to go try it out.

“Let’s stop here and get dinner after we see the detective,” Ren suggests, pointing at the shop. It’s even manned by a protectron! That’s so cute.

Leo nods. “We’ll try it out, sure. Sign up there. ‘Detective’.”

Following the signs, they head down a darkened alley to see yet another blinding pink neon sign. There’s a few men in the way, talking in hushed voices. Ren catches something that sounds like ‘Railroad’ and ‘freedom trail’. Huh. Freedom trail starts in the Boston commons, if she isn’t mistaken. Her and Leo walked it when Shaun was about two months old. It was nice, scenic. She enjoyed it. She makes a small note of what she heard in her Pip Boy, reminding herself to convince him to walk the trail with her again. Sounds like there’s a surprise waiting at the end.

“After you,” he says politely, looking cramped in the even tinier alley that the doorway is housed in. Hell, his shoulders touch both walls when he stands perfectly between them.

Ren goes in ahead of him. The place is cramped, and they’re greeted by the sight of a woman in atrocious clothing, muttering to herself and packing things into boxes. Is she Nick, maybe? They’ve both known a woman who went by Nick, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities.

“Excuse me, Miss?” Leo calls, startling her out of her work.

She sighs, sounding exasperated. “More strays coming in from the rain. 'Fraid you're too late. Office is closed.”

It seems a little early for it to be closed, considering everything outside is still in full swing and the sun is still up a little, but Ren nods. “Sorry, didn’t mean to intrude. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

The woman shakes her head, sounding a little short tempered but upset. “No, that's not what I mean. We're not just closed for the day. We're closed permanently. The detective's gone missing.”

“The detective is missing?” Ren questions, brows coming together. Leo curls an arm around her waist. “How the hell does that happen?”

She sighs once againand scrubs at her face. “Nick was working a case. Skinny Malone's gang had kidnapped a young woman, and he tracked them down to their hideout in Park Street Station. There's an old Vault down there they use as a base. I told Nick he was walking into a trap, but he just smiled and walked out the door like he always does.”

“Who exactly is Skinny Malone?” Leo asks, tilting his head. He makes himself seem as nonthreatening as possible.

It doesn’t matter to her, it seems. She volunteers the information willingly. “I don't know much about him, but he's from Goodneighbor, and that means he's in the well-pressed suits and machine guns school of thuggery.

“Goodneighbor?”

The woman nods, brown hair coming loose from her bun. “Tough neighborhood. Northeast a ways. People with power there care about two things: style and body count.”

 _Sounds like my kind of place_ , he thinks to himself, and with the way Ren nudges him, she’s probably thinking the same thing about him. But Leo nods at the woman.

“Alright. Park Street you said? We’ll see what we can do about it. We need the detective.”

“Yeah,” the woman agrees. “Park Street. Just watch out for Swan. Stay out of the pond if you know what’s good for you.”

Neither mention that Swan won’t be a problem anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

After finishing up dinner, they make a few stops around the local shop to replenish their ammo stocks. She likes the guns guy, Arturo pretty well. ‘Crazy Myrna” was aptly named, and they avoid her after she accuses them of being synths. ‘Synths’ is a word thrown around a lot here, it seems. Neither are quite sure what ‘synths’ are, but apparently they’re bad. Someone points them towards a bar when they ask if there’s lodging.

The Duggout is decent, as far as rooms go. There’s a bed big enough for the two of them and plenty of space to eat their noodle cups. The bar is nice as well, and the two spend the night drinking and hashing out a plan. The plan is mostly ‘don’t die’, but it’s better than nothing. They can’t really do much by way of planning, seeing as they only know they’re up against old school gangsters. There isn’t even a way for them to look up the layout of the station anymore. It would be really handy if they could.

“So the general layout of subway stations are probably all the same,” Ren suggests, topping his whiskey glass off. Her cheeks are already flushed pnk from her own slight intoxication. “General entryway, ticket counters. Uhhh, staircases, then train tracks. So we go in and expect heavy resistence, probably. Do you think we have enough to buy another shotgun?”

Leo shrugs, taking a long drink out of his glass. “Maybe? I think two plain combat shotguns would benefit us better than a double barrel. In fact, we could sell that and use the funds towards a different shotgun.”

“Sounds solid. We gonna do that in the morning, then?”

“Mm-hmm.

“Nice. Anyway, finish your drink.” Ren gives him a look that he’s all too familiar with.

“Taking advantage of the nice bed?” he asks, then drains his cup.

“Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I try to use a lot of actual dialogue from the game now and just tweak it to fit. Like instead of "You" I fix it to "you two" and things like that. Ever since i figures out that the .txt files are listed on the wiki, I use it a lot. So if some of the dialogue doesn't quite match up to what you remember from the game, it's either entirely of my creation, or it's something copy/pasted from the .txt wiki of that character.
> 
> And as always, *youtuber voice* like and subscribe :))))))
> 
> But for real, if you're enjoying this and want to know when it updates, subscribe! Subscribing will send you email notifications every time I publish a chapter.


	7. Interlude: What If

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know nothing about nukes so frankly none of this may be accurate.
> 
> Interludes are just things that don't really fit anywhere else but add information to the story. This one isn't really extra info insomuch as it's basically an alternate beginning. Of sorts.

Ren scowls, crossing her arms. It hurts a little, because she's pregnant and her fucking tits ache, but she's got a point to make. She leans back against the island, resisting the urge to tap her foot on the kitchen tile like some pissed wife in a bad sitcom. She shakes her head in a firm gesture of 'no'.

"I don't like it either," Leo tells her, reaching back to let his hair down, "but this transfer could be great for us. It's not like we'd even have to move, and my fees would more than make up for the commute."

Ren shakes her head again. "I already don't like how far away the Cambridge office is. But Natick? _Natick?_ That's even further! What if there's an emergency, Leo? What if I go into labor early? What-"

"Renee. Enough."

She purses her lips, narrows her eyes. These stupid pregnancy hormones are kind of making her want to cry. She's never been one to cry out of anger, but then again, hormones. "Enlighten me, Leo. What's so hot about it then? What makes this transfer worth it?"

Ah. There it is. Leo doesn't say anything, but he turns to the kitchen table and opens up his briefcase. He knew she'd pull an argument much like the one they're having, so he made damn sure the paper is on top of everything else. Laying it flat on the table, he taps next to a set of numbers. "Read here. This is the salary they're offering me, on top of how much I already make with my clients."

Pushing off of the island, Ren comes forward. He watches her entire demeanor change as she scans over the paper. Her eyes go wide, body slackens.

"That's _monthly?_ "

"Monthly," Leo agrees.

Ren leans away from the table and looks back at him. She looks a little pale now, green eyes still wide with surprise. "I still don't like the distance, but I'm suddenly feeling feeling a lot more open to it."

  


  


  


  


  


Of all days he could need to come in, it's a fucking Saturday. Leo grits his teeth as his co-workers talk behind him, used to coming into the office on what should be their days off. He's not used to it. He's not a fucking slacker like the rest of them. Frankly, he's pissed that Swansonn suddenly dumped a client on him on such short notice, which means twice the fucking work for the same pay. If Leo didn't have a better hold on his temper, and didn't have dignity, he'd probably piss in every drawer of Swansonn's desk.

He and Renee had plans today. Leo should be at the little park in Sanctuary with his wife and son right now, not slogging away at yet another vehicular manslaughter case. He should be pushing his kid in a swing while Renee relaxes at a picnic table, chatting with the other moms and taking a goddamn _break_ for once. And they still need to go shopping later, he promised her new shoes and a nice dinner.

So much to do, and so little time. All because his dick of a co-worker decided he didn't want to deal with this particular case.

None of the radios are on in the room, which serves for little notice when he and the others hear the sirens. He knows what that sound means. There's nothing but cold logic burning in the back of his mind the moment the warning goes up. He was always taught duck and cover in grade school, so while the other idiots panic and run outside, he gets to the furthest room and fucking _ducks_.

The shockwave hits soon after, but the building stays upright. Everything shakes like a vicious earthquake, and the cars outside go off until the EMP wave hits, killing the batteries and the lights overhead. It grows almost unbearably hot for a few moments, but he holds up. Fuck, how close did that thing hit? It's dangerous to check, but that's what he does.

South. It hit south. The mushroom cloud is already too spread out to determine how big it was, but he's certain he's at least out of the immediate fallout range. His co-workers are screaming, crying in fear and pain. They were burned by the heatwave. Their clothing is seared mostly off, their bodies blistered and red with what looks like second-degree burns. One of them looked at the flash, he sobs, and now he can't see anything. It's not Leo's problem.

It's futile to try, but the car doesn't start. Wonderful. He heads home on foot with little other choice. Natick is in a frenzy. There's chaos everywhere, shooting, fires, military. When the army men try to stop him and turn him back a way's away, Leo produces his dog tags and asks what the fuck is going on. He's certain they only answer because he uses his "I was on the front lines at Anchorage" card.

"We know as much as you do," one tells him, trembling with fear and his eyes rimmed red. He's young, much younger than Leo. Barely 20 and quaking in his boots. "All we know is that it probably came from China. We're just the grunts, sir, they haven't told us squat. Go home, sir." The young soldier waves him through, and suggests that Leo keep off the streets, stick to the edge of the woods.

Traveling by the streets seems like the option Leo would rather take. It's direct, and there's little chance that he'll get lost if he sticks to the roads. He's armed, never goes anywhere without a knife in both of his back pockets. Adding to the chaos wouldn't bother him one bit. The thought of taking out sometime before they could touch him, once again feeling blood on his hands and face and in his teeth, without repercussions, makes his vision start to go red on the edges.

But Leo tamps it down. Renee is already going to be scared, undoubtedly, and coming home to her soaked in blood isn't going to help. Fuck, coming home to an empty house would be a blessing. Maybe she talked to that Vault guy they've been avoiding, and maybe he offered her a place in that Vault. Maybe he'll get back, and if Codsworth isn't destroyed, the robot will tell Leo that Renee and Shaun went up to the Vault without him.

Leo doesn't dwell on it. Thinking like that will just slow him down. He makes for the trees like the kid suggested, keeps at the edge so he doesn't get lost. Too many fucking bears for him to travel in there. The distant sound of gunfire sings like background music, until after an hour or so when he's too far from civilization to hear anything.

The birds have gone quiet, and that unnerves him.

It's a long walk full of a lot of thinking. The bomb seemed to have fallen in south-west Boston, and he feels ill at the thought of his friends being gone, just like that. Ren's family lives further away than his friends at least, so maybe his in-laws are safe. He hopes to whatever god will listen that his nieces and nephews are okay. He hopes his friends died fast. But that's not his problem right now.

So many things have changed, he thinks bitterly, in just these past few hours. A new era. One of radiation and carnage like the world had never seen. Life would be so much more simple if it were only he and Renee. They could find somewhere the least amount affected by this, be somewhere that isn't likely to go underwater if the ocean decides to swallow the edges of the continent. Somewhere closer to the equator, where they won't freeze as badly when the nuclear winter inevitably comes. It would be easy with just them traveling.

They have Shaun, though. It would mean they _have_ to find shelter at night, lest their kid wander off or be taken. Hard to sneak around with a fussy toddler wailing because you won't let them eat rocks. Leo had a rough childhood on the streets, and knows what it means to be hungry. Food will grow short when the snow comes. It's going to hurt watching his wife grow gaunt as the food runs low. He doesn't think he can handle watching his own flesh and blood waste away from starvation, but maybe Shaun be alright if they keep him on the breast until he's maybe four. Leo'll give up some of his own rations so Renee can keep her supply up. Leo feels... not great, already having to plan this out. But what choice does he have now?

Following the power lines takes him in the right direction. He figures he's close to home after passing Wicked Shipping, and treks through the woods, bears be damned. Leo's willing to take his fucking chances. He knows the way from here. It's been hours since he left, and he's desperate to get home and make sure his wife and son are alright. He'll be okay as long as Renee and Shaun are okay. He can survive out here on his own. Leo's built for chaos, built to be a savage with a knife always in his hands and blood always dried to his skin. If they're in the Vault without him, he'll be fine.

Losing his first wife to suicide as a young man nearly broke him. He knows Renee is still suffering from postpartum depression. She's not fond of their kid either, and for all she knows, Leo may never be coming home. If things seem hopeless... He's got a loaded handgun in their bedroom. She knows this. Leo picks up the pace to a jog at that, hoping to whoever may be listening that his wife won't do anything stupid. He'll lose his mind if he loses another wife. A murder-suicide of the only two people he cares about will break him. He knows that he'll be fine without them, but only if they're safe, not dead. Leo definitely won't be fine if he comes home to-

Up ahead, there's a cabin. A man stands out on the porch of it, and Leo slows his pace when he sees the shiny glint of a handgun waiting in the guy's hand.

"What are you doing out here?" the man calls, raising his weapon. He doesn't have a finger on the trigger, though, so he doesn't seem to have the intent to shoot at least.

"Going home," Leo tells him curtly, not stopping. What else would a man in a suit be doing in the woods after a fucking nuclear bomb dropped? Going fucking camping? Picking flowers?

Humming, the man lowers the gun back onto the porch railing. He scratches at the long, gray-streaked, unkempt beard taking up the lower half of his face. "This is all the government's fault, I'm telling you. If only you'd taken my case, these gotdamn mind control towers would be down and none 'a this shit would have ever happened.

Mind control tow- Gorski. Wayne fucking Gorski. Leo recognizes the crazy old fuck. Tried to get Leo to take on a case to sue the entire government, claiming the towers were mind control beacons and that violated their constitutional rights to free thought. Leo shakes his head and sets back to a faster pace, and he can hear Gorski talking to himself as he goes. Not his problem.

Leo avoids Concord, wary as he hears the occasional pop of a gun firing. Smoke columns burn black in the sky, and he swears he can smell something like meat cooking. Not knowing if the water of the stream surrounding the subdivision is radioactive, he opts to get back on the road near the Red Rocket. An employee sits out front, looking dazed. He doesn't even seem to see Leo, just stares out blankly towards the trees across from the gas station.

Not Leo's fucking problem. He's close now, too close to even expend the energy on thinking about anything that isn't home.

Sanctuary is dead silent. Not a stray bark, or sob, or even the unaware chatter of a young child. Just silence. There isn't a soul around. Though there are tanks blocking off the main road, not even the military personnel are present. It sets him on edge, and noise be damned, Leo breaks into a full sprint the rest of the way home.

The door is locked when he finally gets there, panting from exhaustion. Thank fuck he remembered his keys when he left the office. Renee never locks the door, but he certainly isn't going to fault her for locking it today. Wiggling the top lock open is entirely too loud, echoes around the empty street, but he'd rather his arrival be audible instead of spooking anyone and getting hurt. There's no hospital near enough to treat him if Codsworth decides to light him up like a bonfire

Codsworth is waiting inside, buzzsaw raised in a defensive way as Leo comes through the door. The Handy relaxes immediately upon recognizing him, dropping the appendage and drifting closer.

"Sir?" he asks, voice module several notches quieter than normal. "Oh, sir, you're alright!"

"I am," Leo agrees. "Where are Renee and Shaun? Are they alright, did they go to the Vault?"

"They're in young Shaun's room, sir, they have been since the sirens went off this afternoon. Mum's been so worried."

That's all he needs. Disengaging from Codsworth, Leo heads down the hall and reaches for Shaun's door. He spares a glance into his open bedroom and sees that the curtains are drawn, and dresser drawer that he keeps the gun in is opened up wide.

Renee's wide-eyed when Leo wrenches the door open. He shoves past her make-shift barricade, pushing the changing table far enough away for him to get in. She's huddled in the corner by the closet, has Shaun cradled in one arm and his revolver held level at his chest with her other hand. She looks terrified, and bursts into tears when she registers who she's looking at.

Leo kneels next to her, taking the gun and shoving it across the floor before wrapping her into his arms. She clutches at him with her free hand, shaking uncontrollably.

"I left Codsworth as a defense," she tells him as clearly as she can, voice choked. "But I heard the door and then footsteps and I was so scared-"

Her sobbing cuts her off, and he holds her a bit tighter. It's a small mercy on this hellish day that their baby is sleeping, his tiny snores filling the air between his mother's tears. Leo doesn't think he could handle it if both of them were crying.

"I was _scared_. I thought you might have _died_ , Leo," Renee whimpers into his collar. "The bomb fell, and I had no idea how close to Natick it was."

Leo kisses her hair, finds himself holding onto the back of her shirt. The adrenaline if the day is beginning to wear off, and he feels unsteady. "I'm here now. I'm alright."

" _I don't know what I would have done if you didn't come home, Leo._ " But judging by the tone of her voice, by the way he can feel her shift to look at the gun, they both know exactly what she would have done.

He is not a man accustomed to feeling fear. But as he leans over his wife, cradles her and their son while bile raises in the back of his throat, it strikes Leo that he's fucking _scared_.


	8. Park Street Station/Valentine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one day, because I got quite a bit of work done today! 
> 
> Some semi-graphic death, and a slight hint of abuse (not the main characters).

Ren gags, loudly, and Leo has to fight off the urge to do the same. It fucking _reeks_ out here. Probably in part of the giant behemoth that’s bloated and decomposing on the street. The whole damn area stinks something fierce. Leo morbidly wonders if it’s going to be like when a beached whale pops, spraying viscera and rotting meat in every direction, because this thing is damn big and likely to pop in a few days. He’ll make sure they’re not in the area when it explodes.

The air inside is stale, as expected, but it’s glorious compared to the rotting corpse of Swan. Voices float up from somewhere in the ticket area the ticket area before they’re even halfway down the stairs. Soft murmurs of voices, purposefully kept low. Leo motions for her to follow behind him, slow.

A man sits in the middle of the floor, dressed like a gangster from the 1950’s, and it’s kind of funny to her. She never took people seriously way back when they dressed like that, and she still doesn’t now. She’s about to nudge Leo and whisper to him that the guy look fucking ridiculous, but he’s more preoccupied with tossing out a grenade and ambushing the men in the room.

Most of the subway system is full of heavy machinery and these ‘triggermen’ as they’ve been called. They get a decent stash of 10mm ammo off of them, since they mostly seem to be toting submachine guns. A few have assault rifles, and one even comes at Leo with a .44. All in all, it’s pretty fucking dangerous, and Ren gets shot in the leg twice in a row. Not fun. Trying to find a spot during the firefight to use a few stims to pop the bullets out isn’t fun either. As a sense of petty revenge, when another triggerman is distracted by running at Leo, she hefts a bag of concrete at him to give Leo the advantage. It does indeed give her husband the advantage, because the goon is knocked flat onto his face into the dirt.

“Do you think the inside of this vault looks anything like 111?” Ren asks, waiting for her Pip-Boy to connect with the mainframe that will open the door.

Leo shrugs his shoulders, keeping an eye out for any danger. “Dunno. Probably different types of vaults.”

“Good point. I’ve heard there’s another vault in the Commonwealth and it’s functional, so maybe not all of them had a metric ton of liquid nitrogen and cryo pods.”

The vault door is painfully loud when it opens, and Ren resists the urge to cover her ears at the screech. Once it’s opened all they way and the little yellow bridge extends, the two cautiously creep in.

“Hey, sounds like the boss is back!” a voice calls from a size room, and there’s a quieter grunt of agreement. Shit. At least two people, and they’re both pretty certain these triggermen aren’t going to be friendly either.

Ren immediately begins to backtrack and grabs Leo’s arm. “Get down under the stairs,” she whispers, already pulling him towards the entrance of the vault. “We’ll ambush them so they can’t raise any alarms.”

Leo grumbles faintly, but follows her lead for once. It’s better than wasting the few grenades he bought from Arturo and, well, raising the alarm.

“Huh? Where is he?” the first voice asks, his footfalls loud and careless. “The door’s open...”

“Maybe he forgot something,” the second voice replies, gruff and uncaring.

Twin footsteps get closer, though the second one walks a little more softly than the other. “Man, this shit has ambush written all over it,” the first complains, and both Ren and Leo look up to see the two men standing over top of them.

“How the fuck would it be an ambush? The boss has a hard enough time getting the door open without a Pip Boy,” the second points out, and curls his lip at the other. “The only other way to open it is _with_ a Pip Boy, and only the Vault 81 kooks would have Pip Boys. The whole fucking Commonwealth knows they’re shut-ins, so why the hell would they be here?”

Leo nudges her and nods very seriously. Ren has to hold back a laugh, and shoots him a glare. No time to mock idiots. She waves her hand out towards the two triggermen who are now creeping along past the heavy machinery, uncomfortable with the lack of humans around. Leo was smart and hid the bodies before they opened the place up, kicked dirt over as much blood as possible, but it leaves the men even more on edge.

“Where the fuck did everyone go?” the first one asks, looking around as Leo creeps through the shadows, motioning for Ren to go the other way. “Ron and Benny should have been here guarding the door. Quinn and Davies, too, and I think Merrick? Where did they go?”

The second man doesn’t get a chance to reply, not with Ren grabbing him from behind and using his own momentum to drag him down and cut his throat. The first shouts in surprise when his partner goes down and reaches for his gun, but Leo grabs him first and makes quick work of opening his throat up.

Ren wipes the spatter of blood off of her face, letting the body fall to the ground. “You gonna hide these too?” she asks.

He nods, holding still long enough for her to wipe his face clean with a stained cloth. When the hell did she put that in her pocket? “Yeah. Pick their pockets already, before someone else shows up.”

 

 

 

 

 

“So, we’re looking for a guy in a trench coat and an old fedora?” Ren questions, stuffing unused abraxo deeper into her pack. “That’s what Ellie said this morning, right?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Old-timey detective?”

“Sometimes, Renee, being with you is like having a really stupid bird.”

She grins, pulling her pack back on and motioning him forward. “Is it because I parrot shit back like a, uh, parrot?”

He takes in a deep breath and lets it out slow. “Precisely. Now, hush. I see someone up on that balcony. Keep low and keep quiet.”

“No shit,” she retorts, though her voice is significantly lower.

Once up the maze of stairs, they peek around the corner and do their best to stay out of sight. Ren points at the dark haired guy speaking and then points at her own hair with an amused look. No doubt making fun of his poorly done topknot. Leo rolls his eyes at her and resists the urge to feel the heavy bun on the back of his head.

“How you doing in there Valentine?” Topknot mocks, facing a round glass window. “Feeling hungry? Want a snack?”

The voice that comes from inside is barely audible, but they can make it out from where they are. He sounds like a noir detective from a bunch of 1950’s movies, accent and all. “Keep talking, meat head. It'll give Skinny Malone more time to think about how he's going to bump you off.”

Topknot scoffs at Valentine. “Don't give me that crap, Valentine. You know nothin'. You got nothin'.”

“Really? I saw him writing your name down in that black book of his.” Valentine pauses for a moment, the loudly calls back, “’Lousy cheating card shark’ I think were his exact words. Then he struck the name across three times.”

Topknot’s whole demeanor changes. The line of his body reads of nothing but fear and anxiety. “Three strikes? In the black book?” he stutters out, shaking his head a little. “But I never... Oh no... I gotta smooth this over! Fast!”

The two of them pull back before Topknot can turn around and spot them, and Ren waves in the general direction of footsteps running towards them. “You can take care of that.”

Leo does indeed take care of it. It’s not painless, but it is fast. Topknot goes out like most of the other triggermen they’ve come across, with his throat left wide open. “Take what you want off of him,” he tells his wife, taking the rag from her to wipe his face again. “I need to get a silenced gun or something. All this blood is beginning to make me itchy.”

“Maybe when we have some more money,” she replies, unloading Topknot’s gun to take the ammo. “We spent too much on these new shotguns.”

“I’m aware.”

After a little bit of rifling through his pockets, she finds a holotape labeled as “overseer room pass” and hands it over to Leo. “Run that through your tape player?”

It makes a small blip noise after he loads it in, and he shakes his head. “Says there’s an error. I don’t think it’s meant to be run through one of these.”

She shrugs and gets to her feet. “That’s fine. I imagine that big room that Valentine is in is probably the overseer’s room. I mean, there’s a terminal next to it? Just making assumptions, but, you know.”

“You know what they say about assuming, Renee,” Leo says like he’s not paying attention, picking Topknot’s body up and hefting him into a pile of boxes. “Now let’s go see Mr. Valentine.”

With no one else in the vicinity, they head towards the window with a little less caution than they should be using. Leo, having gone first, grabs her wrist before she can see who’s inside. His face doesn’t change, but she can tell by the way he shifts that something in there has spooked him. The hold he has on her only tightens when she gets closer to the glass.

From behind a desk, _something_ in a fedora and coat looks up. It’s missing pieces of its face, and the eyes glow a bright, unnatural yellow. It perks up and gets out of the seat, coming around the desk. In a voice that unmistakable sounds like the Valentine that Topknot was just speaking to, it calls, “Hey, you two! I don't know who you are, but we got three minutes before they realize muscles-for brains ain't coming back. Get this door open.”

Leo gives a curt nod and pulls her towards the terminal. He has the password in his hand, but makes no more to even touch the terminal.

“What the fuck _is_ that?” Ren whispers, gesturing with her thumb at the round window.

“Valentine, presumably,” he says, eyeing the glass.

“Well… do we… Do we let him out?”

“He’s the detective. We’ve got little other options if we want to find our son.”

Ren makes an unpleasant face. “Yeah. I guess. I honestly forgot that was why we’re here. Would have been nice if Ellie had told us ‘metal and plastic man with glowing cat eyes’ instead of ‘trench coat and fedora’,” she complains, watching him fiddle with the terminal.

“You’re not winning any ‘mother of the year’ awards, let me tell you,” Leo says, and though there’s no emotion in his voice, she can tell he’s teasing. “And you’re right, but we found him. So let’s go talk to him.”

He presses a button in the terminal and the door hisses open. Valentine, having waited in front of the desk, finally steps out of the shadow to face them. “Ah, my knights-in-shining-armor. But the question is, why do they come all this way, risk life and limb, for an old private eye?”

The three silently regard each other when the couple fails to answer. Valentine cocks his head slightly, taking out a cigarette.

“Well? Either of you gonna talk? Why'd you risk everything to find me? I'm just a private eye.”

Leo takes the initiative. “Pardon. Our son Shaun is missing. He was kidnapped, but we don't know who took him, or where they went.”

Ren nods, backing him up. She twines her hand into his, careful not to knock their Pip Boys together.

Nick hums. “A missing kid, huh? Well, you came to the right man. If not the right place. I've been cooped up in here for weeks. Turns out the runaway daughter I came here to find wasn't kidnapped. She's Skinny Malone's new flame, and she's got a mean streak.” He glances around the room, giving a short, wistful chuckle. “Anyway, you got troubles, and I'm glad to help. But now ain't the time. Let's blow this joint. Then we'll talk.”

 

 

 

 

 

By the time they reach the way out, both have decided they like Nick. He’s pretty damn funny, and doesn’t give Leo too much of a side-eye for his preferred method of ‘they can’t scream if they have no vocal chords’. He’s also handy with terminals.

Nick also gets a few bonus points for patiently describing what synths are when Ren blurts out “So what exactly are you?”

He’s a synth, he explains. A prototype probably. There are three different types of synths. There’s Gen-1’s, which look like a metal version of the insides of humans. Their ‘bones’ and ‘guts’ are all metal and plastic, and the only thing even remotely human about them is that they have eyes. Gen-2’s are a little more humanoid, and look more similar to Nick. Their skin is usually either stark white or stark white but covered in dirt, and while they’re shaped like humans, it’s easy to tell they’re not.

Gen-3’s, he tells them while looking unhappy, are indistinguishable from your average human being. They look like humans, walk and talk like one, eat, sleep, shit, and breathe like one. Some are alright, and some are spies. He doesn’t elaborate how he knows that last bit, and neither ask.

“Another locked door. Shouldn't be too hard...” Valentine mutters to himself, heading to the terminal as Ren starts rifling around in boxes. All she fines in a few vault suits, and Leo rolls his eyes at her when she tries to cram them into er overly full pack.

“You and your compulsive hoarding,” he says with a bit of distaste.

“I am not compulsively hoarding,” she counters, the plastic wrap crinkling loudly as she tries to wedge it under a pillow. “These suits have good reusable fabric.”

“Okay, I got it, but I hear big, fat footsteps on the other side.” He turns to the two of them, a serious look on his face. “Once we step through this door, get ready for anything.”

Ren gives him a thumbs-up and slings her pack back onto her shoulders.

Several triggermen are waiting on the other side, along with a hefty man in an ill-fitting tuxedo and a fedora that’s three shades lighter than everything else he’s wearing. The woman next to him has a sour face like she’s got a dozen lemons in her mouth, gripping onto her baseball bat like it’s her best friend. Her dress is pretty enough to make up for her face, at least. Skinny Malone and his ‘flame’, they presume.

“Nicky? What're you doin'? You come into my house. Shoot up my guys. You have any idea how much this is gonna set me back?” Malone’s sweating under the heavy warmth of the fluorescent lights, scowling at the three of them.

Nick shakes his head a little. “I wouldn't be here if it weren't for your two-timing dame, Skinny. You ought to tell her to write home more often.”

“Awww... poor little, Valentine. Ashamed you got beat up by a girl? I'll just run back home to daddy, shall I?” the woman mocks. Damn, her voice is grating on the ears.

Ren nudges her husband, tilting her shoulder towards the scene in front of them with her brow raised. _What kind of shit is this_? Leo merely shrugs, enjoying the show..

“Should've left it alone, Nicky. This ain't the old neighborhood. In this Vault, I'm king of the castle, you hear me?” Malone puffs his chest out, tying to make himself look more macho. All it serves to do is make him look even more arrogant. “And I ain't lettin' some private dick shut us down now that I finally got a good thing goin'!”

“I told you we should've just killed him, but then you had to get all sentimental!” his girlfriend says, obviously irritated. “All that stupid crap about the "old times."

He turns on her, lip curls in anger. Skinny is entirely to loud when he tells her, too close to her face, “Darla, I'm handling this! Skinny Malone's always got things under control!”

Recoiling a bit from disgust, Ren gives Malone a long, dirty look. His girlfriend may sound like a psychotic bitch, but you _don’t_ talk to a girl like that. Her and Leo may say some shitty stuff to each other sometimes, but they never mean it. You doesn’t get in her face and yell. You just don’t.

“What’s the deal with all of this?” Leo asks, lightly flipping a hand in the direction of Skinny.

Nick purses his lips. “Darla's a runaway. Her father wanted me to bring her back home. Turns out she skipped town to be with my old pal, Skinny Malone. Mob boss.” Glancing at Malone from the corner of his eye, Nick continues. “Never thought he'd manage to scrape together a big enough crew to take over a Vault. Guess life's full of surprises.”

“Hey, who's running this show, here?” Malone shouts, snapping his fingers in their direction “You got something to say, say it to me.”

Very pointedly ignoring him, Ren turns to Darla. “Darla, listen to me. You don’t deserve this.”

Darla glares, snarling at her and drawing in air to say something back.

“Please, just listening to me!” Ren says, holding up her hands in a defensive way. “Girl to girl. I really mean it, Darla. You don’t _deserve_ this

“Hey-!” Skinny cuts in, but the look that Darla gives him shuts him right up. So she’s listening. Good.

“You don’t deserve a man that talks to you like that. Someone who gets in your face and shouts at you? That’s fucked up. No matter how mad my husband gets at me,” Ren lightly shoulders Leo, “he would _never_ talk to me that way. Be cause he loves me, and he respects me. A man who yells in your face and talks down to you isn’t _ever_ going to treat you right. Is this how you want the rest of your life to be? Belittled and mistreated by a guy who doesn’t respect you?”

Darla swallows, still scowling, but silent. Waiting.

“You do deserve a good life with a man that loves you and treats you right, someone that can give you everything that you want. But you don’t deserve it at the cost of someone who’s never going to respect you as an equal. You have a home to go back to. A dad that loves you. You don't want to throw your life away with these thugs.”

Darla’s scowl only grows deeper when Ren finishes. Fuck. She over-sold it, didn’t she? But then she notices the tears beginning to glisten in the corners of Darla’s eyes, and the woman’s shoulders sag.

“I... I...” Her lip wobbles just a little, and then she steels herself. “You're right! What am I doing? I've gotten all mixed up!”

Skinny’s shoulders droop, and he looks startled. “Darla? Wh-where are you goin'?”

“Home, Skinny! Where I should have been all this time.” Darla shakes her head and turns on her heel, squaring her shoulders as she marches past the other triggermen “This is goodbye for us.“

“Darla!” he calls after her, and does it again when she keeps walking. “Oh, come on, Nicky!” he shouts, turning around. “You cost me my men, now you and your friend cost me my girl?”

Nick crosses his arms. “My friend here just did you a favor, Skinny. You always did have bad taste in women.” Glancing over Malone’s shoulder to make sure Darla’s out of earshot, he says, “Now that she's not around to feed that temper of yours, maybe you'll see sense and let us walk? You still owe me for two weeks in the hole.”

Going red in the face, Skinny huffs out a humorless laugh. “You smug, overconfident ass... Agh! All right, you get to the count of ten! I still see your face after that, I'm gunning all three of you down!”

Before he can even begin counting, Leo grabs her arm and hauls her past the rest of the men. Nick follows shortly behind.

“I’ll remember that little pep-talk next time you shout at me,” Leo tells her, side-stepping to let Nick lead them out.

“Fuck off,” she says, forcing down a grin. “I may be an ass, but not the way he is.”

“This way!” Nick calls over his shoulder. “There's a service ladder that should take us right to the surface.”

~~~

“Ah, look at that Commonwealth sky. Never thought anything so naturally ominous could end up looking so inviting...” He turns to face the couple, watching as Leo pushes the sewer grate back into place. “Thanks for getting me out. How did you know where to find me, anyway? Not many people knew where I went...”

“Ellie sent us,” Leo says, offering no more than that.

One of his brows goes up. “She did? I should give her a raise.”

Looking between the two of them, he waits a moment before starting up again. “Now, you mentioned something about your son, Shaun, and how he went missing. I want you to come to my office in Diamond City. Give me all the details. Besides, I think you've earned a chance to sit down and clear your head.”

“Of course. We’ll meet you there. Can you make it back on your own?” Leo asks.

Nick gives the affirmative, and heads off towards the direction of Diamond City. In the pitch black of the night, it glows bright on the horizon like a beacon. It’s beautiful in the fog that’s settled over the city.

Once Valentine is completely out of sight, Ren starts cracking up. It goes on into a full on laughing fit, compete with her doubled over and gasping for air.

“What’s so fucking funny?” Leo asks, keeping an eye out. She’s being too damn loud and likely to draw danger.

Between her laughing, she manages to choke out, “Nick’s eyebrows look like they’re drawn on with a sharpie!”


	9. Hardware Town/Sheng (Caps run)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing much too bad this time. Little bit of raider death, but I tried to keep it non-explicit this time.

“Wanna earn some caps?” Ren asks, closing the door to the Dugout room behind herself. They’ve been here for three days, and Ren’s really liking the place. Other than the dick mayor, the whole town is really growing on her. Not to mention the room is dirt cheap and Vadim was so delighted with Leo speaking Russian to him that they’ve been given a permanent discount on alcohol.

Leo rests on the bed, eyes closed, but after a moment of her silence he motions with his hand for her to go on. Okay, good. She thought he was asleep.

“So I was chatting with the maintenance man a minute ago-”

“Still avoiding Nick?” he interrupts, eyes still shut.

“Yes. But I was talking to Abbot and he says he needs more paint to keep the Wall all pristine and green, all that shit. I sweet talked him and may or may not have used my tits to my advantage. Long story short, he’ll give us 150 if we go to Hardware Town and get some green pant for him.”

Leo’s quiet for a moment. His breathing is so slow that she’s certain he dozed off, but then he asks, “Are you saying you flashed him or you just used your cleavage?”

“Cleavage.”

“Mm. I was hoping you’d say that. I’d be offended on your behalf if he low-balled you that much after seeing your tits. But sure, let me rest a little longer and then we can go.”

~~~

“Please! She needs help, she’s really hurt!”

Both are startled by the sudden voice up ahead. The don’t even get close enough to see the woman’s face clearly, but she sounds panicked. Before either of them can take a step, the woman turns on her heel and darts inside of the building.

“This has ambush written all over it,” Leo says quietly, pulling the handgun off of his belt. “Very poorly done acting, and she was too lazy to even wipe her face paint off.”

Ren nods, taking his word for it. She cant see that far, but he can. “So what do we do? We’ve still gotta get in there and get the paint.”

“We go in and deal with the problem, obviously.”

The woman is waiting just inside the door when they enter, but she’s sprinting off before they even have a chance to ask what the fuck is wrong.

“She’s right back here, hurry!”

“Hold,” Leo murmurs, seating himself on the balls of his feet behind some broken shelving.

Ren scoffs at him, keeping her voice low. “Don’t give me commands that you give to Dogmeat, you dick. Come on, I can hear them talking.”

“Hey! I told you to bring them through the _basement_!” a voice hisses as they creep closer. Whoever it is sounds pissed.

The closer the two of them get to the door, the more obvious a pungent smell becomes. After spending over a month in the Commonwealth, it’s not hard to identify the smell of a rotting corpse. It’s not too terribly strong, but it’s evident. These are raiders, then, without a doubt. Raiders and super mutants seem to be the only things that enjoy having decomposing bodies surrounding them.

“Shut up! They’re headed this way now. Be ready,” a different voice demands, keeping their own tone quiet.

Leo crouches and takes a long piece of rotted wood off of the ground, smirking to himself as he nudges the door open. It squeaks on its hinges, and he hears the raiders inside murmuring excitedly between themselves as he pushes it just a little further. He stops once it’s opened to a sizable crack, just big enough for something about the size of a fist to fit through. Looking to Ren, he holds up a grenade and nods his head the way they came from, telling her to get the fuck back. She obliges, unwilling to be blown up today.

“Aw, did you not close the door all the fuckin’ way?” one of the raiders asks, sounding irritated. “And where the fuck did they go? I thought you said they came in after you!”

“They did!” the woman argues, loud enough that the already quiet sound of Leo pulling the pin on the grenade is masked. He holds it for a solid second, then rolls it through the opening of the door. It buys him just enough time to get to his feet and sprint off towards the shelving.

“What the fuck was that?” he hears, just a moment before the door is blown to splinters. There’s a lot of screaming and yelling after that, with the raiders panicking and in pain.

They’re picked off one by one as they stagger out, bleeding and heavily wounded, until the only sound left is heavy panting from someone hiding out in the back room. Ren pulls the shotgun off of her back, nudging Leo to the side. Ladies first, after all.

There’s a single raider waiting inside, his wounds rapidly closing as he tosses an empty stim to the ground. His face splits in to a grin. Shit. A quick, panicked shot to the head fixes that and his body crumples like paper. Ren makes a face as she’s splashed with the guy’s brains.

“Wonderfully executed, no pun intended,” Leo says, patting her on the shoulder as he breezes past the mess of wood and gore. “I hope you enjoy picking these pockets.”

“Shut up. You see the pain mixer anywhere?” she asks, stepping over the raider’s body.

He shakes his head. “No, but I can certainly pinpoint the smell of death, and it’s coming from the back.”

He’s correct. The closer they get to the back, the heavier the smell gets until Ren has to cover her face, lest she vomit. There’s a single hole in the floor, the collapsed portion creating a ramp. The smell is almost unmanageable when they reach it, and it becomes apparent why when they approach.

Corpses in various states of decay litter the dirt below. A few look fresh but several are shriveled and black, reeking something fierce. They’re all stripped down to nothing, their valuables and anything else on their persons having been taken long ago. Leo shakes his head, guiding her away from the eye-watering stench.

“Paint mixer,” he says, stopping her in front of the device. “Plenty of paint here already. Get that swatch of color out that Abbot gave you and mix the paint already. I want out of here.”

~~~

“You're back. You find that paint?” Abbot asks, seeming to not see Leo behind her with the paint can hanging from his hand. He sets his brush down on the nearly empty can of paint he’s been using.

Ren nods. “Wasn't easy, but we found some, yeah.”

“We?” he asks, then looks startled when he notices Leo behind her. “Oh. Forgot you were married. But you found it? Now that's damn fine news. Why don't you go ahead and paint the first stroke? Let's see how the shade matches up.”

She lets Leo do it, planning to fraudulently throw him under the bus if the color doesn’t match up. Sure, she was the one who mixed it, but she’ll kindly let Leo take the fall. However, the shade is just a touch darker, and will undoubtedly match almost perfectly when it dries.

Abbot nods, satisfied with the color. “Mmmhmm. That's a good shade of green. The Wall sure seems happy with it.”

“Happy to help,” Ren tells him, though the smell of the corpses is still stuck in her nose.

Abbot nods and heads to his work bag hanging off of the fence. He digs through it for a moment before pulling out a burlap bag of caps. “Here's your payment and a little bonus for getting the right shade of green. Don't do anything with it I wouldn't do.” With that, he’s back to his cans of paint.

“Wanna earn some more caps?” she asks as she leads Leo towards the DJ’s house, avoiding puddles in the walkway as they go.

“Depends. Am I going to have to have to wade through gore and mix more paint?”

“One, _you_ made that gore. Two, no. All I need you to do is tell me how much radaway we have,” she tells him, leading him behind the house.

“At least six each. Why?” Leo questions, following her to a small shack surrounded by a pool of murky water.

“You’ll see.” After getting closer, Ren calls, “Hey, Sheng! Need any help?”

All Leo can see is a kid standing out in the open in filthy pajamas, but the kid perks up when he realizes who’s calling to him. “Still need helping cleaning the water supply. Interested?”

She gives the boy a thumbs up. “Three,” she says, turning back to Leo, “we’re getting another 150 if I clean the kid’s pond.”

He sighs, leaning on the railing as he watches his wife begin to strip down. Their stuff is already back in the Dugout, so all she really has to remove is her armor and her boots. He doesn’t like the thought of her irradiating herself just for caps, but then again, they’ve got plenty of medicine to counteract it.

“Have it ready for me?” Ren asks, dropping her socks on her boots. She waits until he nods, then dives in.

She comes out twice for radaway, having taken on too many rads to continue. He’s displeased every time she resurfaces for air, thinking that this is still a pretty stupid idea for caps. There’s a little bit of amusement to it when she tosses a waterlogged toaster onto the ground, though the humor fades fast when he notes she’s starting to turn green. But eventually, she gets all of the junk out and Leo helps her back up onto dry land. Running her a third IV of radaway, she hands him the final piece of junk, which is… a skull? Human, at that.

Once her rad meds are finished with, she leaves his side to confront the kid. “Sheng? Why was there a skull in the water?” she asks slowly, gesturing towards Leo, who holds the skull up for a better view.

“Eh, so maybe you weren't the first person I asked.” he says, shrugging. The nervous edge to his voice is evident enough to the two adults. “Maybe the last guy found an unstable hand grenade. Hey, once the filters do their job, it's all water under the bridge, am I right? Anyway, uh, need some water?”

Ren laughs a little. “I’m good for now. The radaway is making me need to pee enough as is.”

The kid nods understandingly, shifting back to the unwavering businessman. “That’s an understandable issue, lady. Here's your pay. Pleasure doing business with ya.”

“I wasn’t kidding,” Ren says, pushing the bag of caps into Leo’s free hand, rushing past him. “I really have to pee.”

~~~

“So that’s… three hundred, plus the extra hundred Abbot gave us,” Ren mutters to herself on the floor, counting out the caps from the day. “And I’ve got some chems from those raiders to sell… So about five hundred, minus rent and food...”

She nods, and begins packing the caps back into a bag. Good, good. That’s all she needed.

Leo lets out a grunt a few minutes later, woken from his doze with a heavy bag of caps landing on his belly. He turns and gives his wife a glare, being met with a bashful smile in return.

“My mistake,” she says by way of apology. “I wasn’t aiming to hit you. But there should be enough in there for you to go get that silenced pistol you were looking at without having to sell your 10mm. I know you’ve been looking to get a silenced gun, and I figured it would be pretty easy to scrape the caps together...” She trails off, looking at him expectantly.

Though he’s tired and irritated, he nods. It’s a kind gesture. “Thank you. It’s kind of you, my love.”

He feels a little less irate when she beams a smile at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> three chapters in one day????? man i'm on a fuckin roll


	10. The Search Begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only real warning I have is them being suggestive to each other, as married couples are wont to be.

“I don’t understand why I keep getting such nasty looks,” Leo says on their seventh day in Diamond City, twirling his newest knife in his hand as they walk another lap on the bases. “Though I do enjoy that no one has been getting in my way today.”

Ren snorts, watching the guard who gave her a cigarette give Leo a wide berth. “Leo, darling. "If most anyone saw a buff, six-foot-tall Native American man coming towards them with a knife, they'd probably _run_. These people have balls. All they do is move and glare.”

He hums in the back of his throat. “You have a point.”

“So,” she starts, briefly smoothing a hand over his lower back. “So I was thinking earlier. How do you feel about a nice little romantic night?”

“Oh yeah?” he asks, eyes ahead. There’s the faintest hint of a smile curling at his lip.

“Yeah. We get some fancy clothes from Becky Fallon, you know, hit up the Tap House and then the Dugout. Then we take a bottle of wine to go, we get drunk in our room...” She trails off, giving him a look that he’s all too familiar with. Lowering her voice, she continues. “We shed those nice clothes, we kiss some, trade some nice favors-”

“Hey!” a feminine voice calls from behind them. When neither of them turn, they’re both addressed by name.

Ellie’s siting at the Power Noodles stand, a steaming bowl on the counter in front of her. “Hey, you two! Nick’s been wanting to see you in the office. Come swing by in about an hour, after my lunch break.”

The two agree and make small pleasantries with her, before leaving her to ear her lunch in peace. Ren grasps for his hand, getting a firm hold of it as they make their way back to the Dugout.

“Fuck.” She isn’t ready to face this. And double fuck, this feels like it’s going to spoil tonight’s fun.

“I was hoping to avoid it a little longer,” Leo agrees, but stops in place near the salon. He doesn’t budge when she tugs on him.

Ren sighs and looks up at her husband’s face, only to find him watching the entrance. There’s a blurry little shape on the steps, moving around like it’s searching. She squints, trying to get a better look, and she only realizes what it is when it bolts down the steps.

“Dogmeat?” she asks in disbelief, watching the little black and tan shape zero in on her.

The dog nearly barrels her over, jumping up to kiss at her and even daring to ignore Leo’s commands of ‘down’. He’s over excited, and it’s a nice little distraction from the nerves she’s got. He licks at her hands as she’s reaching to pet him.

“Do you think he trailed us here?” Ren asks, rubbing the dog behind his ears. Leo shrugs and scratches the pup under the chin, already trying to figure out where they’re going to get extra caps to feed him.

“Probably. German shepherds are known to do such things. They were sniffer dogs for the police, remember?”

“Right, right. But what the hell are we going to do with him? I know Vadim and Yefim like us, but I don’t know if they’ll let Dogmeat stay in the Dugout.” She shrugs. “And I’m not making a trip all the way back to Sanctuary just to drop him off and come right back.”

“They’ll let him stay,” Leo says confidently. “And what we do is let him roam during the day, unless he starts making trouble.”

Ren gives the dog some good scratches, tugging sticker burrs our as she goes. His coat is still healthy and she can’t feel anything out of place on him. So he’s been eating well at least, keeping out of trouble. Or has been good about not getting hurt. Either way, even though the dog sought them out when he shouldn’t have, she still feels like she should reward him. It was a fine job he did tracking them.

Giving the dog a firm pat, she looks over at her husband. “The school kids are out for their recess right now. Wanna take Dogmeat over there to kill the time?”

 

 

 

 

 

“Glad you two could finally make it,” Nick says, not unkindly as the two enter the agency.

Leo closes the door behind themselves. “Got caught up.”

“Had some stuff to do,” Ren says, idling by her husband.

The detective nods slow, blatantly seeing right through their bullshit but not saying anything about it.He gestures for the two of them to have a seat. An extra chair has been pulled over to the desk, cramping the room even further. They’re both so tall that their knees bump the desk when they sit. The chairs can’t really be pulled back any further, or they’ll block the door off, so they just deal with being crammed in.

“I’m ready when you are,” Ellie tells Nick, securing some paper into her clipboard. She stands just behind him, looking down at the couple with her pencil poised over the sheets of paper.

Nick takes a deep breath, then focuses all of his attention on the two. “Tell me everything you can, no matter how... painful it might be.”

Ren shrugs her shoulders, not liking the two sets of eyes boring into her. “Our baby was taken. We don’t know by who.”

“When you're trying to find someone who's gone missing, the devil is in the details.” Nick gives her a nod, urging her to continue.

She lets out a slow breath. “We're looking for our son, Shaun. He's less than a year old. Why would anyone take him?”

Nick nods once again. “A good question. Why your family in particular, and why an infant? Someone would be taking on all of his care, and a baby needs a lot of it.” Behind him, Ellie has begun writing on her clipboard. “What else can you tell me?”

“We were in a Vault when it happened. Vault 111. It was some kind of cryo facility.” She’s not sure if either her or Leo mentioned it when they met in Vault 114, but either way, the information could be valuable.

“You were on ice, huh?” Nick asks, cocking his head. He reaches for the pack of cigarettes on the desk, offering it out to the two before taking one for himself. “More importantly, you were underground. Sealed up. That's a lot of obstacles to get through just to take one person. Go on?”

Scratching at the back of her neck, Ren says, “There was a man and a woman. They didn't say much, but I remember they called me ‘the backup.’”

The synth hums to himself while patting his coat for a lighter. “So we're talking a small team. Professionals. The kind that know to keep their lips tight when they're on the job. Not sure what "the backup" means though...” He shakes his head. “Anything more?”

“They shot Leo in front of me. He was trying to keep them from taking Shaun and they... they just...” Ren finds herself suddenly choking up at the memory of watching him slump over. “I thought he was dead.”

“It's okay. You don't need to say anything more,” Ellie assures her, while Leo reaches over to give her hand a firm squeeze.

“I’m still here,” he says, low enough that only she can hear.

Ren nods, using her other arm to wipe up what little tears have fallen. Leo’s still here. He’s not dead. Leo’s okay. Still, she grips his hand until the lump in her throat has dissipated.

Both detective and secretary avert their eyes from the two, letting them have a private moment. Nick lights up, taking a long drag before saying anything. “So we're talking about a group of cold-hearted killers, but they waited until something went wrong to resort to violence.”

“He had a handgun,” Leo interjects, adjusting himself in the uncomfortable seat he’s been provided. It groans loudly under his weight. “I didn't get a clear look at it, obviously, but the sound was distinct. High caliber. My ears were still ringing when we unfroze the second time.”

“I'm starting to get a clearer picture of the kind of man our perp is...Go on.” Sitting up straighter, Nick watches them intently.

Ren shifts in the overly stuffed chair, listening to the cushion squeak under her ass. “The woman was dressed in... I think it was a kind of hazard suit?” She shrugs. “The man had some sort of metal brace on his arm.”

Nick speaks up as Ellie purses her lips, furiously scribbling notes. “The hazard suit is interesting. Not many mercs can afford something that fancy.”

“One of them came right up to me. Bald head, scar across his left eye.” She probably would have said he’s handsome, except he shot her fucking husband. He doesn’t get nice descriptors now. “He’s the one who called me ‘the backup’.”

Leo nods in agreement. “Yeah. That’s the one who shot me.”

Nicks brows come together. There’s something like recognition on his face. “Wait. It couldn't be... You didn't hear the name "Kellogg" at all, did you?”

She shakes her head, and looks to Leo. He gives her a negative in return. “No. We never heard a name.”

“Hmm... it's way too big of a coincidence…” The detective turns in his chair to face his secretary. “Ellie, what notes do we have about the Kellogg case?”

She takes a moment to go grab a folder from another desk in the room. She flips through a few pages, mumbling to herself as she skims over her old notes.Nodding, she looks back up at the three of them while tapping on a page. “The description matches. Bald head. Scar. Reputation for dangerous mercenary work, but no one knows who his employer is.”

“And he bought a house here in town, right? And he had a kid with him, didn't he?”

Leo tenses next to her, and she can feel his hand start to pull instinctively to the knife on his hip. No doubt that he’d like revenge for the shot to his chest. She pulls his hand back towards her and squeezes.

Ellie idly nods, finishing up the section of notes she’s working on. “Yeah, that's right. The house in the abandoned West Stands. The boy with him was around ten years old.”

Ren immediately shakes her head. “There's no way that could be Shaun. He’s a six month old baby, not a half-grown child.”

“Yeah. Big difference between an infant and a ten-year old, but that doesn't mean we're on the wrong track.He could have a son of his own.” Nick’s got a sour look on his face as he rises to his feet. “Or maybe he's turned kidnapping into a bad habit.In any event, they both vanished a while back. No trace. How about us three take a walk over to Kellogg's last known address. See if we can snoop out where he went.”

“Security doesn't really go to that part of town, but you two should still be careful,” Ellie tells them, turning away to grab an empty folder. She scribbles something across the front in permanent marker before tucking the notes she just took inside. Aw, they have their own file now?

“I didn't want Ellie to hear this, but I think you should know,” Nick tells them once they’re outside, guiding them out of the cramped walkway. “Everything I dug up about Kellogg before his disappearance is bad news.He's more than just a mercenary. He's a professional. Quick, clean, thorough. Has no enemies, because they're all dead... Except the two of you.”

He glances around, keeping an eye out for security as they make it to the end of the shaded walkway. When he’s satisfied no one is around, he waves them to keep following. There’s a set of rickety stairs ahead of him, out of the way.

“But nine to one odds says he's our man. It's more than just you identifying his distinguishing features. The MO is all him as well.” He shakes his head, taking the lead up the stairs. “Leading a small team to kidnap a baby, with the intention of leaving one of the parents alive for later? Not many mercs in the Commonwealth can pull that off.”

The three pass by a few houses built into the side of the wall, their doors boarded up tight. There’s only one door that isn’t boarded up, and Nick takes them straight to it.

“Here we are. Keep an eye out, will ya? Let's see if I can get this open.”

Ren and Leo lean on the railing to watch the city move while Nick tries to pick the lock. Security doesn’t pay them much mind, at least. Everything down below is busy, traders and residents moving around with purpose, some lingering near shops. It’s kind of a comforting sight, for some reason. The bustle of people is nice, reminds the two of the city before it decayed.

“It’s sounding like we’re not going to get to have our nice date tonight,” Ren says, watching Dogmeat as he sits in front of the butcher’s, begging for scraps. Polly, meanwhile, ignores the dog without a care.

“I’ll take a rain check.” He lightly nudges her with his shoulder.

“We can still get drunk on wine later,” she offers, letting a smile pull at her lips.

Behind them, there’s an almost inaudible ‘click’ and the sound of something snapping. Nick huffs out an angry sound, followed by several curses.

“Lock's too damn stubborn for me,” he grumbles, and the two turn away from guard duty. “One of you want to give it a try?”

“Not good with locks,” Leo says, looking to his wife.

She shakes her head. “If it’s tougher than he can handle, it’s too tough for me.”

Nick crosses his arms, eyes darting around like he’s thinking. He seems to catch sight of something in the distance, because he perks up after a moment. Coming to stand by Leo’s side, he points off in the direction of the entrance.

“You see that platform in the distance? Near the city entrance? That's the elevator to the Mayor's office. Why don't one of you go ask around there?”

~~~

“Why doesn't the mayor come out of his office, huh?” the two hear from the open window as the lift has nearly reached the top. “He afraid of talking to the press? I bet if I said I was with the Institute, he'd come running...”

Piper’s got a look of pure irritation on her face as she stares down the mayor’s assistant. Geneva, isn’t it? But Geneva merely tilts her head, and uses the most condescending ‘bless your heart’ tone when she replies.

“You ever think maybe you could get a man's attention easier if you used softer words, honey? Maybe shout a little less?”

Huh. Maybe they’ll get a nice show this afternoon. Leo hasn’t seen a good cat-fight since before the bombs dropped. It ruined his client’s case when she beat in her sister’s face in court, but it had been amusing to watch. He helps his wife into the building, noting that she’s a little green. Oh yeah. She doesn’t much like heights.

With a faint growl, Piper crosses her arms. “Ah, that reminds me of this article I'm writing about the mayor's affair with a certain air-headed, blonde!” She shakes her head in anger, looking clearly like she isn’t budging. She catches sight of the two from the corner of her eye, and her whole demeanor changes. “Ooooh, look who it is. What brings you to the Mayor's office, huh?”

Flatly, he tells her, “Need to see the mayor about something.”

Amusement pulls at Piper’s face. With a sarcastic voice and an eye-rolling, she replies, “Really? You came to the mayor's office to see the mayor? Who'd have thought?Fine. Keep your secrets. Sooner or later, I'll find out. I always do.”

Geneva clears her throat. “If you are done crowding the reception area, Miss Piper, the Mayor needs to make time for more... responsible citizens.”

“Hmph. I was just leaving anyway,” Piper says, giving Geneva a dirty look. She starts heading to the elevator in the corner, and calls to the couple over her shoulder, “Good luck with McDonough. Just watch yourself around him, okay? “

The office is pretty decently sized, perfectly enough room for everyone to stand comfortably. With Piper gone, Geneva straightens up and gives them a polite smile. “Did you need help?”

Ren nods, turning on some of her charm. The worried mother angle may just work if Geneva is the kind of woman to fall for emotions. “Mm-hmm. We’re helping Mr. Valentine with a case, and it involves the Kellogg residence.”

“Mister Kellogg's residence? He left town a while ago. We foreclosed on the property and locked it up.” Geneva shifts in her seat, and Ren recognizes the dismissive look the secretary has. “If there was something belonging to the man that you have a claim on, you could ask the mayor to hear you out. No guarantees.”

Leo curls his arm around her waist, and Ren leans into him. “Is there any way _you_ could help us, Miss Geneva? The mayor seems like such a busy man, I don’t want to have to interrupt him for something as silly as a detective case.”

She shakes her head, her neat little bob swishing around her neck as she does. “I'm sorry, but you're not getting that key from me. Why do you want it so badly, anyway?”

Showtime.

Ren lets her whole demeanor change, sagging in her husbands grip as she forces tears to build in her eyes. She blinks quick and looks away, while Leo does his part and gently comforts her. Avoiding eye-contact like she’s embarrassed, Ren forces out. “All I want to do is find my son. The man who owned that house kidnapped him.”

Geneva lets out a small gasp, and a whisper of ‘ _oh’_. “You do seem like a sweetheart." She sighs. "All right. I'm just going to leave this key on my desk and "forget" I put it there. Your baby's lucky he has a mother like you. I hope you find him”

She takes the key out of her desk and slides it across the desktop while the guard in the corner rolls his eyes, unmoved by her show. Leo’s the one who retrieves it while Ren furiously scrubs at her eyes, trying to get the fake tears to stop. Hook, line, and fucking sinker.

~~~

“Place seem small to you?” Nick asks, giving the little shack a once-over. It is pretty fucking small especially for both a grown man and a child. “Figured a guy like Kellogg would think big...”

Leo stretches, extending his arms above his head as far as they’ll go. The wooden platform that makes up the second floor is so low that he can flatten both of his palms onto the wood. Small place indeed. There’s a little black sofa to his left, along with a nonworking TV. A metal stand is pushed up against the wall, with a single oil lamp and a hotplate set on top of it. Place is kind of dinky. Kellogg had a look about him like he would enjoy better accommodations than this. Something is amiss, no doubt.

Crossing the room to the desk, Ren picked up a beer bottle. Ugh, he seems like he’d have better taste than this Gwinnett piss-water. The red toolbox on the desk has nothing much of interest in it, but she takes the half-used roll of duct tape buried at the bottom. She glances up the staircase, wondering if she should take care of that.

“Let's take a look around,” Nick suggests, pacing to the right wall. “Kellogg must have left _something_ behind.”

He starts lightly tapping on the walls, muttering that something isn’t right about this place. He’s right, of course, but figuring out _what_ is going to be the challenge.

Leo takes the back wall, knocking in much the same way as Nick. There’s enough built up on the back and right walls that a secret room or something similar could be feasibly hidden. The wall echos back just the same wherever they tap, though they go over both walls several times.

Up the stairs, Ren doesn’t find much. A neatly made bed and a yellowed sleeping bag on the floor. Some moldy food and coffee cups that have certainly seen better days, their insides full of old drinks that are half molded, half solidified. Another hotplate, more tape, a second lamp. Look pretty non-conspicuous, really. She pockets the tape and makes her way back down the narrow stairs.

“There’s jack shit up there,” she tells the other two, shrugging her shoulder. “Some nasty food and cups, and some places to sleep.”

Leo nods, feeling a little irritated. He idly looks at the ceiling while he speaks, lips pursed. “This is a pain in the ass. Something has to be hidden in plain...” He trails off, his eyes searching. “What is that?”

Both Nick and Ren look up and ask the same question. “What’s what?”

“That,” he says, pointing at a wire coming out of the wall. “That isn’t connected to any lights in here. What is it connecting to?”

He crosses the room, slowing pacing as he follows it back across, watches it disappear into the back wall, and not reappear anywhere else. Goes into the wall, presumably down into the floor. So there’s something electrical in here, somewhere. The question is _where_.

“Look for anything out of sorts. A switch. A button,” Nick says, yellow eyes following the wire. “There’s gotta be something in here.”

Another ten minutes go by, proving fruitless. Leo leans on the desk, letting out an annoyed huff. “This is bullshit.”

Ren nods in agreement, having already given up roughly seven minutes ago. She sits on the sofa, feet curled up under herself.”Whatever he’s hiding, it’s either hidden really good, or in such an obvious place that we’re gonna feel stupid when it gets found.”

“You checked that desk?” Nick asks, and Leo gives him a firm nod.

Leo moves to stand, and stumbles when his knife gets caught under the lip of the desk. It flips out of is sheath, having been left unsecured from earlier in the day. Grumbling to himself, he kneels down to retrieve it, and is met with the faintest red glow in the corner of his eye.

“There’s a fucking button.”

Ren laughs. “Told you! Push it.”

He slams it with the side of his fist and takes his knife, getting back to his feet. He doesn’t feel stupid for not having previously caught it, he just feels fucking irritated that it took so long to find.

Nick lets out a small laugh as a panel in the wall opens up to another room. “Huh. Well... That's one way to hide a room.”

Inside is a trove of supplies. The left wall is lines with shelves, full of a variety of foods and several nuka colas. There’s a few ammo crates, more beer, a few stims. Also, a really fucking nice chair. Ren hums to herself, nudging past the two men to pick up a box from the end table.

“Hey Leo, look,” she says, holding it up. “Your favorites.”

“San Francisco sunlights,” he replies in an agreeing tone, taking the box from her. It sounds like it’s mostly full. “Kellogg has good tastes, I’ll give him that. Put these in your bag for me?”

Leaning down, Leo takes a half-smoked cigar out of the ashtray. “These cigars are all we’ve got, but the question is, how do we track him with just a measly pack of smokes?”

“Some dogs out there in the Commonwealth can track a man for miles,” Nick says, eyeing the front door. Dogmeat had accompanied his owners back up to the door, but hadn’t been permitted entrance.

“So… we use the dog?” Ren asks, shifting her shoulder bag strap.

Nick gives her a firm nod. “Go get your things from the Dugout and finish up any business that you need to get done. I’ll keep Dogmeat here long enough for you to get your affairs in order. After that, we’ll let him get the scent.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry these last few chapters have been so dialogue heavy. I'm trying to work on that. Though be warned, the next chapter is also dialogue heavy, but it's original dialogue instead of stuff pulled from the game itself.
> 
> Also, if you're a longtime reader, you may have noticed the fic is a little different than before. Basically, I went back and cut down on all the unnecessary filler in the beginning, combined a few chapters, and rearranged a couple chapters to make things be paced a little better. I hope it doesn't take away from the story for you! I just wanted this to be a little more cohesive, since I actually have some semblance of a plot for this fic now.


	11. Following The Trail/Hard Talks

They leave Nick behind. The synth and Ellie are tasked with digging up as much information about Kellogg as they can, though there probably isn’t much to go on. Leo ends up trading his 10mm for a silenced one, and using Renee’s hard-earned caps to stock them up on ammo. What they don’t spend on ammunition goes towards better armor, which there isn’t much of in Diamond City. But they outfit themselves and reserve a room in the Dugout for a week to keep all of their shit in.

Both Nck and Ellie leave them with warning to be goddamn careful, Kellogg is dangerous. Like they don’t already know that. Like they aren’t here because he tried to murder Leo and took their fucking baby. But Ren and Leo assure the two they’ll be safe, and they’ll come back when this is all over.

Once Dogmeat has the scent, he’s off, slowing every few minutes to let his owners catch up. They’re led straight out of Diamond City, and the dog takes them out onto the main road. Oh boy, being out in the open. Their favorite.

“So,” Ren starts, crossing her arms over her chest. “What exactly are we gonna _do_ when we find Shaun?”

“We’re finding him,” Leo says sternly, thinking she’s going to try to take him out of finding their son again. To his surprise, she smacks his arm with the back of her hand. She crosses her arms back, idly playing with the edges of her arm guards.

“I fucking know that.” Ren sounds irritated, but forces calm into her tone when she starts back up. “But we need to think of the big picture, you know? Where are we going to raise him, Leo?”

Her husband doesn’t answer, instead pointing further up. The dog has stopped. When approached, the pup is happily wagging his tail and faintly drooling. He barks in the direction of a small pond just off of the road, with a beer bottle and another cigar waiting for them. Upon closer inspection, it’s another San Fran.

“Wasteful asshole isn’t even smoking the whole thing,” Leo complains, holding the butt out for the dog to sniff. Dogmeat gets the scent once again and takes off.

The next few minutes are silent, until she speaks up again. “I really mean it, Leo. We need to be thinking about this. Are we gonna raise him in Sanctuary? The Red Rocket? Are we going to buy a house in Diamond City so he can be around other kids?”

He adjusts his pack, though it’s only to mask the shrugging of his shoulders. “Don’t know.”

“And how are we going to feed him?” Ren continues, tucking her hair behind her ears. The cool of the late afternoon is chilling her face, turning her cheeks and nose a rosy red. “It’s been almost a month and a half. My milk has already dried up to the point that there’s no way I can feed him enough to keep him healthy. Most of the food out here is irradiated. I don’t know how to get a six month old baby food out here.”

“I don’t either.”

“That’s why we need to talk about it!” she exclaims, temper flaring. “If we’re going to have our son back soon, we need to know these things, Leo! We can’t just wing it like we were before the bombs dropped. If we wing it out here, he could die.”

He has the audacity to scoff at her. “Like you care.”

Ren stops in place, arms dropping to her side. He’s… right to an extent, but not in the way he’s implying. She cares about her son, in a way. Feels protective of her offspring in the way she feels protective of children in general. When Kellogg took him, he had to have known just what he was going up against, considering the insane amount of care that infants need. Either Shaun’s well taken care of at the moment, or he’s dead. It’s the only real possibilities that make sense.

Everyone who she’s mentioned Vault 111 to didn’t even know it existed. Kellogg’s a merc, a prolific one at that. Someone with a lot of knowledge and a lot money had to have taken their kid. At this point, she’s willing to give up on him not because of her dislike of motherhood, but because whoever took him probably has the means to take better care of him in this hellscape. So what if they’re likely to mentally fuck him up? So are is _actual parents_! Being raised by a mother with a severe, uncontrollable mood disorder and a sociopath father, he’s going to be fucked up either way.

Leo’s stopped, facing her with something like frustration masked in a neutral expression.

“I _do_ care,” She bites out. “I may not want to be a mother, but if he’s in my care, I’m going to fucking protect him. Now for once in your goddamn life, will you have a conversation with me about our son?”

Leo takes in a deep breath, before looking away from her and resuming walking. “We know nothing about how to take care of a child out here. We have no _choice_ but to wing it. Regarding his care, our home, all of that, we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

Ahead, Dogmeat woofs loudly, like a warning, before several molerats emerge from the ground at once.

  


  


  


  


  


“Shh.”

Leo raises a brow, wanting to ask if she sees more ferals, but Ren merely holds a finger to her lips. She points up again where the faintest hints of a feminine voice can be heard, with the faint smell of burning plastic growing heavier in the air. Peculiar. He glances over towards the sunken, waterlogged city to their right, hoping they haven’t drawn the attention of the ghouls in there.

The two creep closer, using the shadows cast by the fading sun to keep out of sight. It’s a bot, an assaultron in fact. It’s ripped to pieces, sparking and spitting smoke, but not outright on fire. Its voice grows clearer as they approach.

“ _..ention, assailant, ... your weapons imme..._ ”

“Its voice is cutting out,” she murmurs, still keeping back. It could be a trap.

He nods, staying silent.

“ _... Known_ _m_ _ercenary... Exercise_ _e_ _xtr..._ ”

“Should we get closer?” Ren asks, turning her gaze over. Dogmeat, hearing ‘closer’, tries to trot forward. Leo catches him and holds the mutt in place and deliberates it for a moment.

“I don’t see why not. There’s nothing else around.”

“ _..al signs. Alert: Critical..._ ” it crackles out as the two rise to their feet.

Leo approaches first, shotgun in his grip. If this _is_ some sort of ambush, he’s ready. If the thing somehow springs up or something attacks them, he’s got a powerful weapon in hand and he’s damn sure not afraid to use it. From behind him, Ren speaks.

“What happened here?”

“Error. System corrupt,” the assaultron says, the first clear thing it has spoken. Its eye cameras turns towards them, and with a haunting amount of human-like emotion, it tells them in a panicked, upset voice, “ _I can't feel my legs_.”

“This had to be Kellogg’s doing,” Ren murmurs, watching its cameras shift to her.

“Signature confirmed. Assailant: Kellogg. Known associate...” It trails off, then spits some static before clearly telling her, “Assailant route tracked. Pursuit possible to Northwest.”

“Kellogg did this,” Leo says quietly, almost in awe, looking down at the robot. Had to have taken a lot of strength to tear it apart like that. Goddamn. It’s a pitiful sight.

After it finishes talking, the assaultron begins repeating the broken messages that it was spouting when they first approached, its eye cameras looking around wildly. Leo’s kind enough to bash its face in until the machinery stops working all together.

“Northwest,” Ren repeats to herself.

Dogmeat is already waiting up ahead, barking in their direction to make them come on faster. He’s got a scent, apparently, if a set of bloody bandages on the ground are anything to go by. They’ve been seeing plenty of those around. Question is, do they really belong to Kellogg? Either way, it’s all they’ve got to go on, so they follow the dog.

They’re led to more bloodies bandages handing precociously off of a broken chain-link fence, some of the gauze in a puddle on the ground. Dogmeat keeps tracked on the scent, while Leo and Ren quietly discuss the possibility of this being a trap. It’s like Kellogg _wants_ to be found. He’s a skilled mercenary, one who knows better than to leave trails. He could have dumped his bloody bandages in water to hide his trail, the same with his cigar butts. It could be a trap to get them right where he wants him. Leave Hansel and Gretel a pretty little crumb trail and gobble them up when they reach the end.

But they’re ready for him, this time. There’s not going to be a bullet plugged into Leo’s chest, and Ren won’t be locked behind a case, left unable to help. Kellogg’s got another fucking thing coming.

  


  


  


  


  


They take a slight detour over to the blood bank when they’re swarmed by bloatflies and bloodbugs, slashing at the creatures while Ren bitches about their uncreative names. Dogmeat’s more than happy to help, tearing at the bugs that lose wings and get left on the ground. It’s a messy affair, and they really only stick around long enough to ensure all of the bugs are dead so that they don’t get followed.

Leo urges the dog to continue on and follow the smell, but the pup merely sits, wagging his tail.

“You think he lost it?” Ren asks, hands in her pockets. She’s covered in bloatfly gore and the blood of a bloodbug’s last meal, as are Leo and the dog.

“It’s a possibility,” he agrees, looking at the mess shared between the three of them. “All this carnage may be too distracting.”

She nods. “You think maybe if I happen to have some of those bandages in my pocket that he can get the scent again?”

“Not sure,” Leo admits. “Could be mingled in with your smell too much.” He glances over at the dog, who’s busily chewing on his own foot. “Could also be worth a try.”

Pulling the blood crusted swath of bandaging out of her pocket, Ren calls the dog. He perks up immediately and vigorously sniffs at it, taking his sweet time as he does. “Alright, boy. Follow the scent.”

The smell doesn’t seem to be too contaminated, at least. After a moment of wildly sniffing the air, he bolts off in a different direction, though he does slow down after a moment when he hers his owners attempting to catch up.

They end up not going very far. Being wary of the turrets set up on the roof, they follow Dogmeat to the entrance of a fortified building. The turrets won’t go off unless they get within range.

“Fort Hagen” Leo tells her quietly, looking up at the faded red, white, and blue banners.

“Yeah.”

Dogmeat, uncaring of the caution his owners are showing, barrels right up to the doors of the building. Or, where the doors should be. It’s boarded up tight, surrounded by cinder blocks and walls of sandbags. Dogmeat whines and scratches at what he can reach of the wood covering the doors.

“He in there, boy?” Ren asks, getting a bark in return.

“Most of those bandages were less than a few hours old, and heavily soaked. There’s no way he got all of this done on his own in just a few hours time, especially considering that he was probably heavily injured,” Leo tells her, shaking his head. “He’s got help. There’s no way he’s in there alone.”

“I mean, yeah,” she agrees. “What exactly are you getting at here?”

Leo turns, looking out over the sky. It’s fading out into deep reds, yellows, and violets, the highest point already dark and dotted with stars. “It’s getting late, and we have _no idea_ what we’re up against in there, Renee. There’s turrets everywhere, a barricade erected by an unknown amount of people with an unknown amount of firepower. We need to rest, and we need to better equip ourselves before we go in.”

After a moment, Ren nods. “Yeah, you’re right. But how do we better equip than what we did this afternoon? And where are we sleeping tonight? Home and Diamond City are both too far away.”

“We get you a snipe rifle to take care of those turrets, first off, and find me some better blades.” He takes his glasses out of his pocket and puts them on, before looking over his Pip Boy map. “It’ll be dark by the time we get there, but the sisters at Oberland will let us sleep there. We’ll make a trip back to Diamond City in the morning and leave the dog with Nick. It’ll take us about two days to get back here, max.”

“And after that..?”

“After that, we come back and kick Kellogg’s ass.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pardon for how short this turned out to be! I wasn't quite sure how to proceed with this once, and I didn't want to overload it with a bunch of unnecessary junk if I didn't have to. However, the bright side: There's either three or four chapter left in this act, before act two begins!
> 
> Also, I know they go from bickering to completely fine with each other really fast, and I'm gonna be real, me and my partner do too. We'll have an argument and like ten minutes later we'll be like 'wanna go get a snocone?' and things will be fine again. So I know Ren and Leo's emotional rebound time might seem a little unrealistic to some of you, but not to me because that's how my partner and I operate.
> 
> Edit: Or, rather, let me explain the above a little better. I have BPD (borderline personality disorder) and basically I can't regulate my emotions. I have vicious mood-swings, and I don't get the lighter end of emotions. I don't get happy, I go straight to euphoria. I don't get frustration, I go straight to rage. And I definitely gave that trait to Ren when I created her, and Leo is of my partner's creation, and is modeled after him to an extent. So, while my outbursts are unpredictable and unpleasant, he does his best to be understanding that I have no control of it. The outburst or episode happens, and we work past it, and we move on. 
> 
> As a result, I've projected all of this onto the two of them. So I understand that while it looks like she's a bitch and he just shrugs it off, it's more of Leo understanding that Ren's broken brain can't process emotions correctly and she's doing her best considering the circumstances that they're in.
> 
> Thanks for listening to me ramble about my shitty brain lmao. But seriously, I hope that sheds a little insight on the two of them.


	12. Interlude: In-Between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interludes are just things that don't really fit anywhere else but add information to the story.
> 
> Felt like throwing in some of their backstory. Chapter 13 is coming soon. Enjoy!

“So uh,” Valentine starts as Ren’s leaning against his desk, waiting for Leo to return with her sniper rifle.”Got a question for you, Ren.”

“Shoot.”

“Can I ask how you got all scarred up like that?” The synth gestures to the left side of his own face, and while she knows he’s talking about her face, she can’t help but note how torn up _his_ left side is.

“Oh, this?”

Though Ellie is busy at one of the other desks, Ren can just subtly see her shift her head to listen. Ren reaches up and lightly touches the scarring that mares most of the left side of her face. Some of it is raised up keloid scarring, but the rest is just flat silvery-pink scar tissue.

“I was in a car accident when I was a kid,” she tells Nick, turning to face him. “Real bad. Orphaned me and my brother. Basically what happened was the car got t-boned on my side, and the door crumpled in, the glass from the window cut me to high hell. Then the car caught on fire and,” she gestures at her scarring.

“Orphaned you?”

She nods, watching Nick settle deeper into his seat. Aw fuck, is he trying to wrestle her life story out now? “Me and my brother survived. I was eight, he was already sixteen. We lived with his wife’s- she was his girlfriend then- his wife’s family until he turned 18. Our mom was _really_ old when she had me, so she died at like, sixty? So that life insurance policy she had paid well enough for him to move back to out family home and take custody of me.”

Most of those words mean nothing to Ellie, Ren is sure. But Nick nods understandingly. He knows what happens when a car gets t-boned, he knows what a life insurance policy is, and legal custody and all of that shit.

“Sounds rough,” Nick says about as sympathetically as he can.

“Oh yeah,” she agrees. “It was bad. But I turned out pretty alright.”

He nods, slow. After a moment he looks back down to the case file in front of him and starts writing in it. Ren goes back to looking at the door, trying not to make his desk move with her idle leg jiggling.

“I know he won’t tell me,” Nick says, still writing in the file, “but how did your husband get that one on his chin? He doesn’t seem like the kind of man to ah, take damage.”

“Knife fight. He was a kid.”

She can feel that there are several more questions forming just at that statement. But instead of asking anything more about it, Nick instead asks, “So how did you two meet? You’re quite the odd couple.”

A faint pink blush raises to her cheeks. “The army,” she says, knowing that it’s _technically_ true.

They did, in fact, meet in the army. He was handsome, and one of the only men allowed to keep his hair long on the basis of cultural reasons, being Native and all. He had a thick, gorgeous bun on the back of his head, looked damn good in those ugly green fatigues. They’d happened to sit next to each other in the canteen to get away from the messy, noisy people wanting conversation. It backfired though, and they ended up conversing.

It came up that she had housing on base, instead of living in the barracks. One thing led to another, and after duty that evening, she found herself leaning over her kitchen table with this handsome stranger taking her from behind.

“Ren?”

She looks up from her daze, zeroing in on Nick’s face. “Sorry, I was kind of out of it. What’s up?”

“I asked, and how exactly did you end up married? I know you two like each other, but I can tell you grate on each other’s nerves more often than not.” Nick gives her a small smile

Ren can’t help but bite her lip, turning her head away while blatantly trying to force down her smile. Oh, ain’t _that_ a story. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Nick start to grin. It’s not quite a story she’s willing to share.

Their statuses as fuck buddies had been going on for a while, and he was thinking with his dick, and not his brain when he agreed to have sex with her on a higher-up’s desk. And when he inevitably caught them, he decided a fit punishment was marriage. They wanted to have sex so much so bad, then there was no reason for them to not! Really, what could they do about it? Go to someone above him and complain about an unfit punishment for getting semen on his desk?

“We got in trouble, and our punishment was marriage,” Ren tells him, resisting the urge to laugh as the door opens. Those words are all Leo catches.

“Oh no,” Leo says, shaking his head. There’s a new strap slung over his shoulder, and she’s hoping it’s her new sniper rifle. “Don’t tell him that story.”

“Wait wait wait,” Ellie says of the back of the room, and Ren starts cracking up. “How was marriage a punishment?”

“We got caught in a...” Ren trails off, trying to think of the right words.

“Compromising situation,” Leo supplies.

“Yeah! A compromising situation. And we had to get married as a result. But we ended up actually liking each other, and that’s how we ended up married for two hundred and fifteen years!”

“And you,” Nick says, looking over at Leo while Ellie squeaks out a laugh from the back of the agency. “You willing to share some of _your_ backstory?”

Leo shrugs. “What exactly are you fishing for? Orphan that raised myself on the streets, got married young, joined the army when my first wife killed herself. It’s all very tragic.”

Nick shakes his head, watching Ren take the sniper rifle from him. “You’re an orphan too?”

Once again, he shrugs, letting Ren look through the scope at his chest. “Father ended up a homeless meth addict, mother was an ex-meth addict living on a reservation in Tennessee. I was no concern of theirs. Anyhow, we need to get to bed early tonight, love. We have to leave early to get there at sunrise.”

Ren nods, pushing off of Nick’s desk and shouldering the rifle. It’s nice, scope isn’t too scuffed either. She likes it pretty well.

“You still gonna watch the dog for us?” she asks, nudging Leo out of her way.

Nick gives her an affirmative nod, and both he and Ellie bid the two goodnight. After the two are gone, she turns to face her boss.

“Those two are… certainly something.”

“Something,” Nick agrees, taking a pack of cigarettes out of his desk. He’d like to hear more of their stories, one day. They seem like a treasure trove of bad ideas and worse situations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	13. Fort Hagen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small warning for mild, semi-descriptive injuries

Lying on her belly in the dust in the shadow of a tree, Ren looks down the scope of her new sniper rifle. True to his word, it had only taken them two days to get everything sorted out. The sniper rifle had eaten into what little caps they had saved up, but it’s a good piece of mind, and a surefire way to kill the turrets without getting killed themselves.

She takes in a deep breath and pulls the trigger when she lets her air out. The turret explodes into a small shower of fire and metal, spraying everywhere and all but destroying the sandbag barrier built up in front of it. The other turrets in range perk up and move around with purpose, trying to identify the target. But she’s out of range and out of sight. She’s safe.

Once they deactivate and go back into their idle modes, she starts to rise. “Come on,” she murmurs in Leo’s general direction, turning to find him watching the horizon. Good, so he’s keeping watch like he should.

He follows her lead, though her lead is the long way around. Leo can’t complain though. She’s the sniper, she knows better than him on this. So he trails along as she leads him around the guard post and sprints when she does, ducking behind the old crumbling pool hall set up adjacent to the military post. Ren leads him around the right side of the building, going slower and slower as she gets closer to the edge of the building.

“I’m in view of two, possibly three if I get to the very edge,” she tells him in a low voice, though there’s nothing around but the turrets. He doesn’t think they can catch voices from so far away, but still. “So just keep watching my back. Stay behind that dumpster back there, and leave me room to retreat as soon as I’ve shot.”

Leo gives her a curt nod, backing up as she goes back to the corner of the building. She crouches this time instead of lying down, muttering under her breath as she leans out into view as far as she dares. She shoots and is up faster than he thought she’d be, sprinting back to him and plopping down with her back to the dumpster. Bullets pelt the ground where she just was, but stop soon after.

“We have to go around the building now,” she tells him, “the turrets have tech that will smarten them up to location.”

“So where next?”

Looking to her left, she starts formulating a plan. “Around that truck, to the side of the gas station that we can’t see. I should be able to get at least one turret that way.”

Indeed she does, peeking out of the open garage door while perfectly in view, and in range, of a second turret. It starts spitting bullets the moment its neighbor blows to pieces, and she just barely gets back in time. Ren sighs, quiet but annoyed.

“It’s gonna stay zeroed in right there. We have to go way out and way around again.”

They spend almost an hour circling the building, finishing picking off the turrets perched on the roof. It’s cold out, but the sun beating down on the exposed back of her neck is getting real fucking tiresome. But she finally gets the last one, at least, she thinks it’s the last one, she can’t hear anymore whirring or grinding gears

“So how the fuck do we get in?” she asks, shouldering the rifle after it’s had time to cool.

“Not sure,” he tells her, keeping an ear out for anything she may not have gotten. “I don’t know the layout of the place, but I’ve got a couple assumptions. If there were turrets up there, then there’s probably some kind of access on the roof. We never checked the parking garage, so there may be an unblocked exit in there as well.” Scratching at the base of his bun, Leo shrugs his shoulders. “Personally, I think working our way from the top down would be our best bet.”

“You’re right.” That probably _is_ the best bet. Going through the garage would leave several floors of unknown hostiles above them, perfect to get an ambush on the two of them. “We going up to check for a roof access?”

Leo looks up at the scaffolding, blatantly over two hundred years old, rusted at the joints, wood broken and rotting away. “I guess so.”

~~~

Inside, there’s the immediate and close whirring of a turret, a much heavier caliber version than its rooftop counterparts if its different sounds are anything to go on. They can also hear faint chatter, like people speaking. But it doesn’t sound human.

“How are we playing this?” she asks, lips almost touching his ear. It’s so quiet that even up close,Leo almost can’t hear her.

“Carefully. Too many unknown hostiles.”

They do not, in fact, go carefully. Ren’s sneaking ahead of him, trying to keep out of the turret’s field of view, and stumbles straight into what she assumes is a Gen-1. It looks about what like Nick described, at least., only human in the way it’s shaped with its weird metal guts and wire-built frame. The moment its eyes lock onto her, all hell breaks loose.

It slams her across the face with the butt of its gun as she’s already falling backwards, knocking her fully to the floor. She barely manages to get out of the way when it fires at where her head just was. Behind her, Leo curses loudly and draws the attention away from her just long enough for her to get to her feet and get the fuck behind cover. Her mouth is full of blood from cutting her cheek with her teeth, and the left side of her face fucking _hurts_. More fucking scars to add to that side, it seems. There’s no choice but to ignore it for now, though, unless she wants a synth to turn her head into ash. She gives the synth a taste of its own medicine with the butt of her shotgun, but the sweet taste of revenge is short-lived because a second Gen-1 comes to the rescue of the first.

From behind her, Leo hops overs downed filing cabinets, taking out a synth that runs at him with a clean shot to its face. Metal and all sorts of unpleasant bits go flying, and his face isn’t spared cuts from the shrapnel. At least it doesn’t get in his eyes.

Both are nearly half deaf from the bangs of their shotguns by the time the room is clear enough for them to breathe without worry of getting shot. There’s still at least three turrets that need to be dealt with, and more chattering from synth is beginning to echo up from what is presumed to be a stairwell, but they’ve got a few seconds to catch their breath. It’s unpleasant to catch their breath, with the room reeking like burning plastic and hot metal.

“That wasn’t _careful_ ,” Leo hisses, hurriedly reloading his shotgun. These things have goddamn lasers, and while he’d much more prefer the quiet up close, lasers aren’t exactly something he can go up against with a knife.

“Sorry for slipping and blowing our cover,” she spits, sounding sarcastic. She reloads her own gun, and all but rips a molotov off of her belt when she’s done.

“Not inside,” Leo tells her, sounding progressively more irritated. “Do you want to burn the place down with us in it?”

“Then you deal with the turrets!” she shouts back, uncaring of blowing their cover. She’s already done it once, what worse could she do now? The synths already know where they are, anyway. Fuck. Leo’s right about it burning the place down, but she’s pissed off and her eye is swelling shut. That’s going to affect her shooting.

He does indeed take care of the turrets, at least, letting her deal with the other Gen-1’s that come up from the stairwell. The turret standing by next to the stairs doesn’t fire at the metal beings, so they must be programmed not to attack those. So these aren’t just oddly-placed pre-war security measures. More of Kellogg’s fuckery, then.

Already, she’s exhausted by the time they deal with the synths. They can hear more downstairs, somewhere on the floor below them, but they don’t seem to be trying to get up to the two of them. Ren wipes her face with the back of her hand, hissing a little at the sting of it. The skin comes back streaked with blood.

“We need head gear,” she grumbles, looking down at the destroyed helmet on the strongest synth they’d dealt with. The synth had taken a fill ammo clip from both of them to be taken down, and the wiring and materials on it makes it blatantly better built than the others.

Looking at most of it, this Institute tech is kind of shitty. The armor is melted and splintered, and the guns seem to shoot sideways. Unaligned sights, poorly calibrated triggers. With Leo backing her up, Ren uses one of the guns on a stray Gen-1 that appears from the stairs, and it hardly does shit. Only half of her shots hit their target, the rest scorching the walls behind the synth. When it’s finally down, she smashes the butt down on its head, and the goddamn thing _breaks_. The gun, not the head. The head cracks audibly, but the grip visibly splinters. She considers taking one or two for later use, to take apart or something, but the craftsmanship is so shoddy that it’s probably more likely to blow up in her hands than a pipe gun. Mass-produced garbage.

“These are shit,” she tells him, tossing it to the floor. “Loose fucking trigger, terrible sights, and you saw how most of my shots didn’t hit. I know I’m kinda inaccurate, but not _that_ bad.”

Leo gives her a nod. “Fair enough. Reload your shotgun and let’s go. I’d prefer to get this over with as soon as possible.”

The second floor is crawling with more synths than anticipated. There’s a room they seem to need to get into, but it’s chained from the inside and there are at least three more synths inside, more than happy to shoot at the two of them through the holes in the walls. God, if she never has to smell burning plaster again in her life, she’ll die a happy woman.

Working their way around, there’s plenty of room for them to get ambushed. One or two _do_ get the jump on them, and Ren gets a lovely burn across her arm when a laser grazes the exposed skin. A few of them have these weird stun batons that give an unpleasant zap. Those seem to be just as shoddily made. Leo takes down a Gen-1 by its legs, and while he’s busy stomping its head in to save ammo, a second Gen-1 breaks its baton over Leo’s back.

It. _Hurts_. It tips him into a frenzy of adrenaline, and while she’s distracted trying to keep back, she receives a baton to the leg. It lands a solid hit on the fatty topside of her thigh, and through her pain, she’s surprised that it doesn’t break. It surely felt like it went all the way to the bone! The synth gets a shotgun blast to the face for his hard work. By the time she turns around, Leo’s faintly panting and his hands are bleeding. The two synths that ganged up on him are in pieces on the floor, ripped clean apart with his bare hands.

It takes almost half an hour of workaround, but they finally make it to the room with the chained door and take care of the Gen-1’s. There’s a wall mounted turret spitting bright blue lasers at them, and Leo gets glanced across the arm by one. It burns the armor on his upper arm, catching the bare skin as well. The wound is raw and red, but he refuses to use a stim on it yet. It looks no worse than her own, at least.

“I’m tempted to throw a goddamn grenade,” Leo growls, back against the wall. The turret stopped shooting for the time being, but it’ll start back up again the moment they go into view. This is a lot more difficult than a turret that spits bullets.

She hesitates, glancing down at her hip. She found something earlier, and it’s kind of shaped like a grenade, but she isn’t exactly sure. Still, she nudges him with her shoulder.

“I don’t know what this does,” Ren starts, taking the vaguely grenade shaped object from the other explosives tethered to her belt, “but I picked this up off of a synth.”

He takes it and looks it over, wincing slightly at the ache of the burn pulling at the bend of his arm. The thing she hands him is pale, oblong, and rusted a little bit. Its shape is strange in general, but the pin is clear enough. It’s _some_ kind of grenade, but that leave the issue of what kind exactly is it? What is it going to do when it explodes?

“Renee,” he says, voice very serious. “We’re using this. If it starts a fire, I will break out a window and we will jump. It’s a survivable fall. Go out into the other room and be cautious. I don’t know what this is going to do when it goes off.”

After a moment of looking at him, she gives him a quick kiss and darts out from the way they came in from. When he’s assured she’s out of range, he pulls the pin. He leans out just long enough to throw it, and takes off towards her the moment it’s out of his hand. The turret makes its trademark sound as it lock onto its target, and he hears it fire twice before a small explosion rocks the area.

There’s no smell, no smoke wafting out of the room, and he glances over at his wife. She pulls herself up from behind a filing cabinet and raises a brow, looking bewildered. Ren points and cocks her head. _Should we go check it out?_

Leo creeps in ahead of her and sticks the barrel of his gun around the side of the wall, waiting to see if it’ll fire again. But there’s nothing, no lasers shooting at him, no idle sounds of poorly oiled gears turning, and he hesitates just a moment longer before turning the corner.

“Oh.”

Seeing that he’s standing in view and not getting shot, Ren comes to his side and looks. The room is _covered_ in frost, spattered from wall to wall, and the turret is heavily damaged but frozen in place. Frost? What the hell could make ice so quickly? Could it be based with liquid nitrogen, maybe? And looking down in front of an icy column housing an equally icy terminal, there’s a mine frozen solid, undetonated.

“Cryo grenade?” she asks, more to confirm her own theory than anything.

“Mm-hmm.” Interesting. If these can be used in enclosed spaces, he’ll definitely be building up a cache of them.

He hardly notices her backing into the far wall until she grunts out for him to move. Looking back, he finds her getting down on her knees while pulling the sniper rifle off of her back. “It’s not a lot of distance,” she tells him, lining up as he flattens against a wall, “but I want to destroy it in case it defrosts.”

Ice shards fly everywhere when she shoots, and the turret goes out with a smokey bang. All the immediate danger is gone, at least. They’re safe to take a breather, even if it’s for just a moment.

“Can we just write this one off as a lost cause?” she asks, sitting on a metal desk to assess her wounds. Her thigh is screaming from the earlier hit, and her arm still stings from the burn. Not to mention all the synth shrapnel in her face. “Let’s just make a new one and call it good.”

“’Make a new one’,” he mocks with a scoff. “’ _Make a new one_ ’ _._ ”

“Yeah, a new one. Let’s just pop out a fresh baby and start over. We’ll even rename it Shaun.”

Leo rolls his eyes, lets out another scoff. “You’re ridiculous, Renee. We’re not having another. I, in fact, enjoy that you’re not in pain anymore and that we can have sex again.”

“Sex is overrated,” she retorts, but he catches her smile as she hops down. She immediately yelps and favors her uninjured leg. “Fuck. Should we stim up or..?”

“One. For our burns. Bruises will heal, burns will get infected.”

~~~

Fort Hagen is a fucking maze. They get turned around more often than not, and the synths just seem to keep coming. They don’t know where from. One moment, the path behind them will be clear, and the next there will be three more flanking them from behind.

“This is getting,” Leo catches a stun baton in his hand, rips it away and uses it to bash in its owner’s face, lip curled in anger, “ _tiresome._ ”

Ren huff for air, leaning against the wall after looking at the hall behind her. Empty, for now. “Fuck, you’re telling me.”

The synths, while irritating, are manageable by this point. The damn things can’t even shoot straight most of the time, so they don’t have to worry too much about getting new burns from those. The real problem is all the fucking turrets that keep popping up. Their bright blue lasers seem to deal even more damage than their red counterparts, and both Ren and Leo feel pretty fucking lucky that they haven’t lost any limbs to the annoying pieces of shit. Sometimes it’s safe enough for her to back way away and snipe it, but the range on these are way greater than the more stationary metal ones that shoot real bullets. It’s a crap shoot on whether or not she’ll be out of range.

He wipes the bladed tire iron off on his scorched thigh armor, cleaning the excess coolant and debris off. Switching over to it was more of a practical endeavor, to save ammunition and cut down on all of the noise the two of them are making. “How are you doing on shotgun shells?”

“Well enough that I don’t need any of yours just yet.”

“Good. I don’t know how many floors of this we have left, and I’m hoping to come out of this with at least a little bit of ammo left over.”

“That makes two of us,” Ren mutters.

Continuing on, there’s too many musty tunnels, far too many synths. The fusion cells will sell nicely, but it’s kind of at the back of her mind at the moment. She’s just focused on getting through here alive and making sure her kid is still alive in this hellhole.

It’s too hot down here, too, which is weird considering it’s freezing out. She isn’t really sure how heat physics works, but the further underground they go, the warmer it gets. And the air gets more stale. Breathing in the moldy, stagnant air is far from pleasant, and she wishes she had a bandana to cover her nose and mouth with. Leo grumbles about it, but tanks on without too much fuss.

Ren rubs at the right side her face, resting her hip on the single desk sitting in this small, concrete room. There’s another set of stairs leading down, but she needs another break. Just one more breather. She got whacked across the left side of her face a moment ago by a now dead Gen-1, and she’s pretty sure it might have cracked her cheekbone. Her eye is swollen all the way shut from all of the blunt trauma her left side had taken today, and she does nothing to stop Leo when he holds her still and uses a stim on her face. It doesn’t do much for the bruising, swelling, or shrapnel cuts, but her face feels just a little better. Yeah, it probably fractured something, then.

He’s not looking so hot himself. Most of his armor is blackened in spots, and she can see that the burn on his arm has gotten irritated. Wait. He used a stim on that earlier. Is that a fresh injury in the same spot?

“Let’s just make a new one, _please_ ,” she mumbles, pressing her face against his chest plate. The toasted leather smells really bad, but she doesn’t move.

“We’re close now,” he tells her, curling his fingers into her hair. “Just a while longer. Simple military complexes like this don’t usually go down much further.”

Leo coaxes her to get fully to her feet, and he checks the hall they just came from while she unhurriedly reloads her shotgun. There’s nothing new, thankfully. Broken down turrets, shredded synth corpses. Nothing new. Nothing to surprise them from behind, this time. Still, he closes the double doors and rigs a wooden pallet behind it, that way if it opens, they’ll hear it crash into the floor.

“It’s safe for us to go,” he says, coming back to her side.

Ren nods begrudgingly. Neither of them are very keen on putting shit in their bodies, but she’s tempted to ask him for a thing of med-x. She’s aching all over and doesn’t know if she can take much more of this. The bruising on her thigh makes walking painful, and stairs are hell in their own way. But she gives him another nod, and they make a slow decent to the bottom of the concrete stairs.

“If it isn't my old friends, the frozen TV dinners,” a voice echos from the com system as they reach the bottom, and Ren tenses, hard. Leo grits his teeth. Neither of them could forget that voice. “Last time we met, the two of you were cozying up to the peas and apple cobbler.” Kellogg says, his tone toying at the edge of humor.

“Keep going,” Leo murmurs, pressing a hand briefly to her lower back to urge her along.

They continue on in silence, but nothing else comes. Kellogg knows they’re here now. It feels like some kind of timer has started, like if they don’t hurry Kellogg is going to personally pop out to greet them, or maybe he’ll just be gone when they reach the end. But they don’t rush. Rushing makes mistakes. Rushing would have gotten them zapped by a Tesla coil at the end of the hallway, but Leo disarms the tripwire before she can accidentally set it off.

On a nearby desk, he swipes a few grenades before they carry on. He has no idea what these kind do either, but they look handy. He’ll try one out on some synths, later. Those are pretty good for testing out new shit, and from the way their current adventure has been going, there isn’t going to be a shortage of Gen-1’s any time soon.

Anther turret, another locked door. But once the turret is gone and the door has been jimmied open, there’s a set of double doors waiting for them. Of course, once they pass the threshold of the metal door, Kellogg’s voice fills the hallways.

“Sorry your house has been a wreck for two hundred years. But I don't need a roommate. Leave. “

Leo fights down the urge to snarl something back. He’s not normally so ill-tempered, but today has been an unpleasant ride, and he’d just like off of it.

“Get bent,” Ren calls back, unsure if Kellogg can even hear them. Even if he can’t, she’s still satisfied by talking shit to him.

“Be cautious once we pass through here,” Leo warns her, turning so he can shoulder the door open. “We have no idea what waits through here.”

“Then let’s find out,” she tells him, gesturing for him to open it. “I’m ready to get this over with.”


	14. Confrontation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of graphic violence y'all. So much. Violence, blood, the likes.

Desks line the walls inside, the terminals all broken down and their users dead on the ground. The chairs sit neatly, filthy, waiting for their owners to come back and take a seat. The room itself is musty, with rubble on the floor. Most of the overhead lights have burned out by now, too. Leo glances around, trying to find the cameras in the room, but it’s too dim to see anything. He gestures for Ren to follow.

Kellogg’s voice comes again as they make their way through a little hallway, and down a curving set of stairs. “Hmph. Never expected you to come knocking on my door. Gave you 50/50 odds of making it to Diamond City. After that?” They can practically hear him shrug. “Figured the Commonwealth would chew you up like jerky.”

A few Gen-1’s are waiting for them at the end of it, in a darkened hallway. Fighting them off in such close quarters is difficult, but they get it done with minimal injuries. It’s just three, though one is of the stronger variety. Leo’s even stronger, though, and chops at it until it’s a pile of sparking metal on the ground.

The hallway is full of rubble, lined on one side with computers and other high-tech equipment, and a metal gate on the other. The gate in interspersed with a few doors, but the doors are locked with magnetic locking systems and can’t be opened. Peeking in, it’s too dark to see much on the other side of the gate. More desks and office systems, some filing cabinets. But that’s about all. Leo offers Ren a hand as they pass through the biggest pile of debris on the floor, helping her keep her balance.

They’re met with a hallway on their right, and further up is another mag locked door. Leo can see an elevator waiting, but there’s no terminal around to get the door open. With no other choice, they take the hallway. Kellogg speaks to them again, just as soon as they pass through the doors.

“Look. You're pissed off. I get it. I do.” He sounds sincere. But that doesn’t matter. Sincere or not, they’re in this mess because of him. “But whatever you hope to accomplish in here? It’s not going to go your way.“

Ren hurriedly smacks at Leo’s shoulder and pulls at his shoulder about halfway down the hallway, urging him to fall back. He watches her kneel down and take the rifle off once her back hits the wall, and only realizes what the problem is when she shoots, and a turret further down the hall explodes. A moment later, he hears the tell-tale call of “Hello?” from a synth. Fucking wonderful.

After clearing them out, they take a quick look around. It’s some kind of barracks, mostly. There are bunk beds in one of the rooms, with footlockers neatly tucked down at the foot, sheets still pristinely tucked. There’s a bathroom on the other end, and she has enough restraint that she only takes two bars of soap to tuck into her bag. It’s not what they’re looking for, however, and the two take yet another hallway with stairs.

Of course, there’s a second turret waiting. Leo tries out one of his new grenades on it, and it explodes into a brilliant ball of light that leaves the turret sparking and clearly disabled. Some kind of electromagnetic pulse, it seems. Pretty light show, too. He lightly rubs at his arm, the skin hot but thankfully not burnt from catching a laser. This leather armor is better than he’d initially given it credit for.

There are two paths at the bottom of the stairs. Ren checks out the left side, but it’s collapsed in and the one accessible room is full of useless junk. She shrugs and tells him as much. “Let’s go right, I guess.”

A third turret waits for them down the right path of the next hallway, but it spits and sparks much like the one above their heads. Must have gotten caught in the blast. Not that they’re complaining. Saved them some trouble, that’s for damn sure. There’s a suspicious lack of resistance, and while it makes them wary, they’re not complaining too much.

Turning the corner, there’s two doors waiting. On their right is an infirmary, and the left is a small cafeteria. They check out the infirmary first, closing up the doors and seating themselves on the small military issue cots. The whole room is dusty, and the beds are uncomfortable. But it’s a chance to sit down and relax, which they haven’t had much time to do in their few hours here.

There’s not much by way of medicine in the room. Some radaway, rad-x, and two stims on a table. With a lack of noise outside, they dare to take more time and patch themselves up. The two new stims go to treating any newly acquired burns, and Ren convinces her husband to do something about his hands.

“I understand that ripping them apart is therapeutic, but you can’t even really grab stuff anymore,” she tells him, using a bit of antiseptic from her pack to wash the bacteria from the wounds. He hisses in pain at the sting of it. “Use a stim on them. I’m not telling you that you can’t rip them apart anymore, but take care of your hands. We’re no good if we’re too injured.”

Leo grunts something that she can’t understand, but accepts it when she empties half a stim into one of his palms, then does the same with the other side.

“We’re getting you gloves,” she tells him as he opens up the infirmary, giving a good look around before exiting.

“It’d be a wise choice.”

The cafeteria is full of skeletons and overturned chairs, people seeming to have died just moments after the bombs fell. It happened pretty early in the morning, she thinks. Somewhere around 8 or 9AM. These people were probably eating breakfast when the sirens went off and the alarms were raised.

“Let’s go see what’s in the back,” she suggests, stepping over a chair. “There might be something useful back there.”

They get a few grenades, and there are some veggies that look suspiciously fresh. Those get left behind, mostly because more synths appear the moment they come out of the storage room. There’s another group of three or four, they can’t tell just yet, but at least two have guns.

“Where the fuck are these coming from?” she shouts, exasperated. She narrowly avoids getting blasted in the face by a beam of blue, but Leo comes to her rescue by putting the blade on his tire iron through the Gen-1’s head. “I’m getting real fucking tired of lasers.”

“You’re telling me,” Leo says back, armor more black than brown.

Once the synths have been dealt with, she breaks off the path. “There’s a quantum down there,” she says, pointing to a grated window with a bright blue glow in it. “I want it.”

“Then go get it.”

She does go get it, and he watches her rifle through the toolbox in there too. She pockets something, more fucking tape probably, and then holds something up to the blue light. Some kind of holotape.

Coming up to the bars, she grips onto them and pathetically mewls, “Let me out!”

Leo scoffs, hiding the fact that he’s actually kind of amused. “Let yourself out, Renee. Let’s go before more synths show up and we get shot at again.”

Like before, the moment they cross the threshold of a door, Kellogg speaks to them again. “You've got guts and determination, and that's admirable. But you are in over your head in ways you can't possibly comprehend.”

At least threemore Gen-1’s wait ahead, and Leo allows her to chunk a fragmentation grenade down towards them. It takes out two, but there’s a particularly resilient one that just keeps coming at them. It even tanks a shotgun blast to the face. With enough effort, it finally goes down and stays down. Leo stomps its head with the heel of his boot anyway, just in case.

It’s disgustingly humid through the long hallway, but on the upside, they find a first-aid kit with more stims inside. Those get tucked away for later, and the two carry on. It brightens up the further down the hall that they get. A regular white light bulb guides the way, instead of the washed out red emergency lights that they’ve grown accustomed to.The amount of light being given off doesn’t change by much, but it’s better than bumbling around in the near dark.

“It's not too late,” Kellogg tells them as they reach the end of the dimly lit tunnel. “Stop. Turn around and leave. You have that option. Not a lot of people can say that.”

“Not a lot of people can say they’ve hurt my husband and survived it, but here you are,” she mutters under her breath, and she hears Leo let out a small sound of amusement.

They blow up another turret and pass through an area clearly meant for a higher-up. Ren politely steals all of the man’s booze and any unrusted shaving razors that she can find. Not like he needs it anymore. Leo messes with the terminal on the far wall, and makes a pleased noise as she’s tucking a bottle of wine into her bag.

“What’s up?” she asks, trying not to crush the glass bottle.

“Deactivated the turrets up ahead. No more getting shot at, for however brief a time.”

It earns him a kiss, and then another just because they both deserve it. He accepts it with no fuss.

A small lobby waits outside of the apartment, and true to his word, the turrets don’t try to kill them on sight. Their lights remain green and happy, instead of red and shooty. That suits the two of them just fine.

There’s a red painted door across from the receptionist’s desk, with two American flags on either side. When they pass through, the other room is a clusterfuck of all sorts of trashed furniture and miscellaneous junk. A film recorder up against the wall, all sorts of upturned shelving and chairs scattered like toys. To the right, there’s some kind of nice bed and several containers around it. It’s mostly ammunition, but a few stims and a pack of mentats, too. Its a lot nicer than anything else they’ve seen out in the Commonwealth.

Leo comes close to the door at the far wall, mag locked of course. A heavy sigh filters in through the PA system before his hand can even graze the cold metal.

“Okay, you made it. I'm just up ahead. My synths are standing down. Let's talk.”

The door hisses open, swinging back of its own volition. Ren gives it a long look, and while Leo doesn’t step back, he sure looks like he wants to. This whole thing reeks of a trap, but they’re far too stuck in the spider’s web to even fathom being able to get out now. He takes off the shotgun, the barrel long cooled from its use hours ago, and makes sure it’s loaded before giving his wife a glance.

With Leo leading, they enter a small transition room with another mag locked door up ahead. It hisses open when they get close, and the overhead lights all flash on, row by row as the two of them step into the room. Ren deducts that it’s the big room from earlier, the big dark one with tons of magnetic doors and nothing going on inside.

“And there they are. The most resilient people in the Commonwealth. Funny, I thought I had that honor.”

Kellogg waits in the middle of the room, looking faintly amused. His synths, true to his word, are standing down, one lazily pacing behind the two of them. The man look just the same as he did when they had their first unfortunate meeting, same armor, same scars marring his face. The two regard him for a long, silent moment.

When they’re quiet for too long, Kellogg rolls his hand in a ‘get on with it’ motion, glancing between the two of them. “You came a long way. Let's hear it.”

“Where’s out son, Kellogg?” Leo asks, voice firm but neutral.

Kellogg lets out something like a sound of amusement. “Right down to the nitty gritty, huh? I’m surprised to see you here. Impressed, even. Most people could survive a .44 to the chest.”

“I’m not most people. Where is my son?”

Shaking his head, Kellogg shrugs his shoulders. “Hmph. Pal, I'm just a puppet like you. My stage is a little bigger, that's all.”

Ren clenches her jaw, and bites out through gritted teeth, “Just tell us where out fucking kid is, Kellogg.”

“Not sure why you care, lady. Last I remember, you were screaming at your husband here to let go of the baby.”

“You ever heard of baby blues? Postpartum depression? I may not have bonded with him, but I love my son and want him back.” Lies, lies, lies, every bit of it. Except the wanting him back part, that’s a half truth. If he’s back in her arms, she isn’t exactly going to say no.

Kellogg crosses his arms, regarding her for a moment. “Like I said, lady. I’m just a puppet.”

The sound of the synth behind the two of them shifting is uncomfortable to say the least, but they ignore it. It can be dealt with, with ease if it decides to become a problem. Both of them have quite a fucking bit to say to this man and don’t have time for distractions. He beats them to it, though, by speaking first.

“But if you're hoping for a happy reunion? Ain't gonna happen. Your boy's not here.”

What? They’ve come all this way for nothing? Leo keeps a firm grip on his shotgun, while Ren clenches her fists so hard that her nails dig into the skin.

Kellogg continues on, uncaring of her crestfallen look. “Shaun's a good kid. A bit older than you expected, am I right? But he's doing great. Only... he's not here. He's with the people pulling the strings.”

So the ten year old with him was possibly Shaun? Ren has no way to really know, she didn’t see the kid, but she… she can deal with that. Bigger kids are easier to deal with than needy infants. The knowledge that he’s a little older is actually kind of soothing. But next to her, Leo’s irritation is poorly masked.

Leo takes a step forward, drawing himself up to full six feet height. Kellogg is as tall as Ren, and though Leo’s only got four inches on the both of them, he seems so much bigger. His tone is rigid and firm when he speaks. “Stop taking in cryptics. Tell us where he is and how to get to him.”

Once again, Kellogg shrugs his shoulders. “Fine. I guess you've earned that much. Shaun's in a good place. Where he's safe, and comfortable, and loved. A place he calls home. The Institute.”

Of course.

“So where is this place, and how do we get in.” Leo doesn’t phrase it as a question, but a demand.

Something like amusement pulls at Kellogg’s mouth. “Heh. Haven't you been paying attention? You don't find the Institute. The Institute finds you.” He gestures loosely with his hand. “You open the closet, it's just a closet. You can never find the monster that hides inside. Not until it jumps out at you. “

“That’s it?” Ren finds herself asking. “You shoot my husband, steal our fucking baby, and you can’t even tell us where to start?”

“Shooting him was…” He hesitates and thinks for a moment. “A regrettable accident. I admire your dedication to motherhood, however. Even if it is ultimately useless.”

Kellogg shifts his stance, looking between the two of them before settling his gaze back on Ren. “But I think we've been talking long enough. We both know how this has to end. So... you ready?”

Leo blasts him in the face before Ren can even take a breath.

Kellogg staggers back, blindly reaching for his gun as the synths in the room begin firing. When he looks up, Ren’s shocked that he isn’t dead. He kind of reminds her of one ofthe villains showcased in The Unstoppables. Half-Face is the name, she thinks. She’d liken Kellogg to that now, yeah, seeing as half of his face is blown out from the shotgun shell but he’s still up, grinning, and asking, “So that’s how it’s gonna be, huh?”

Then he disappears.

Leo grabs her and pulls her back as a shot rings out, just as deafening in here as it was in the Vault. It narrowly misses her, lodging itself in a desk just to her right.

“You take the synths,” Leo says in a rough whisper, dragging her away from the gunfire. He briefly squeezes her hand. “I’ll take care of Kellogg.”

The synths are easy enough to deal with, even with the back and forth trading of gunfire behind her. The entirety of the situation has her adrenaline rushing almost immediately, and she pulls a Leo, in the sense that she hefts a half dead Gen-1 up and throws it into the other two. They fall like bowling pins, but that doesn’t keep them from firing in her direction.

Behind her, Leo ducks down behind old desks, listening to an old monitor go out with a bang from a .44 bullet. Kellogg is crafty, and if Leo’s sense of sound wasn’t so keen, he wouldn’t have any idea where Kellogg is. But Kellogg's footfalls are too loud, too noisy from a man used to not having to cover his tracks. Even with his ears ringing, Leo can keep up with where the man is, and darts out of the way before a bullet goes through the desk where his head just was.

Actually _shooting_ him is a problem. Since Leo can only hear and not see, he isn’t sure if his shots will actually hit. He gets lucky a few times and earns a few grunts of pain, but misses more often than not. Kellogg gets a few good hits on him as well, and frankly it’s a miracle that the leather has stopped so many .44 rounds to the chest.

Ren shouts in anger, and Leo almost falls backwards over a downed synth behind him. Thinking quick, he leans down and takes it by the arm, slinging the metal man in Kellogg’s general direction. It hits him, hard, and the Stealth Boy field is momentarily disrupted. Kellogg isn’t looking too great in the brief glimpse that Leo gets. He’s missing a lot of chunks. Letting out a humorless laugh, Kellogg punts the now dead synth across the room, going back to being completely unseen.

“You're not as soft as I thought!” Kellogg shouts, giving away his location. Leo aims in the general direction of Kellogg's chest, and feels pretty satisfied when he hears another grunt when a bullet hits.

Shoving the last synth corpse out of her way, Ren backs herself to cover. She kneels down, out of the way, and is quiet as she takes the sniper rifle off. Watching down the scope, she can see just the faintest glimmers of the edge of the stealth field as Leo and Kellogg trade bullets. After observing for a moment longer, she lines up a shot with what should be his head. The bang echos loud enough that she’s temporarily deafened, but the spray of blood that isn’t protected by the stealth field lets her know that she hit her mark _somewhere_ on his body. It gives Leo an advantage, and while she’s getting out of sight again, he pumps more slugs into Kellogg’s person.

Kellogg, seeing that they’re getting the upper hand, chunks a grenade where Ren just was. Distract the more dangerous of the two is his line of thinking. She’s out of the way by the time it goes off and only gets hit with shrapnel, but it’s still pretty fucking scary.

“Wasting your time!” Kellogg taunts, but immediately has the wind knocked out of him with a bullet, presumably to the chest.

The mercenary is starting to slow down, Leo’s noticed. Kellogg has taken quite a bit of damage, and it’s getting easier to track him just by looking at the blood dripping down onto the floor. Leo’s got no idea where his wife is or if she’s okay from that grenade blast, but he hopes she’s alight. Also hoping if she’s okay that she’ll give some more backup.

Something hard hits Leo in the face, a fist probably, and a second later a foot connects with his chest. He doesn’t go down, but he staggers hard enough that Kellogg easily gets the better of him.

Or, he would have at least, if another shot didn’t ring out. More blood spatters the desks and floor, and Kellogg curses in pain. Oh good, Ren’s still alive!

It gives Leo enough time to gain his footing and hurl himself forward, using his shoulder like a battering ram to throw the stunned Kellogg back. Theoretically, Leo could just pin him down and beat Kellogg’s face in until he stopped moving, but Leo’s been keeping track since Kellogg last reloaded, and there’s two more bullets left in that revolver. He’s got no desire to be shot in the head today.

Instead, he ducks behind cover before one of those shots can land on him. Leo’s getting ready to come back out and attack, but Ren yells “duck!” from the other end of the room, so he stays right in place.

The sound of something exploding echoes through the room, and a wave of heat accompanies it. He burrows his body further under the desk, thinking of the way the heatwave from the nuke felt washing over him as the elevator took them deep into the vault. Did she just set of something nuke related?

Kellogg shouts something, something like a curse washed out by agony. The heat recedes enough that Leo feels comfortable to come out, and his shotgun is ready as well. Kellogg fires the last bullet in his direction, and Leo fires back.

Ren’s behind a few desks, waiting for the next shot to ring out, but nothing else comes. The only sound that she can hear over her struggling to catch her breath is a solid thump on the ground, and what sounds an awful lot like a death rattle. She’s pretty sure it isn’t Leo, because he’s upright and breathing hard when she creeps out. But she can’t see a body anywhere.

“Did we get him?” she asks, but Leo shushes her.

Keeping his shotgun up, Leo creeps towards the direction that the last shot came from. He can’t see anything on the ground either, other than copious blood splatters. Searching around, he uses his boot to lightly kick around the floor, wondering if Stealth Boys can stay active after death. When the toe of his shoe comes in contact with something solid and squishy, he figures the answer is yes.

“What did you throw at him?” Leo asks, still nudging the body with his boot. It moves with the motions, but remains still otherwise.

“Had no idea what it was,” Ren admits, using a shaking hand to wipe the sweat from her face. “The big ball of green light that came out of it makes me think it was a plasma grenade.”

Hm. He’s liking all of these grenades that they’ve discovered today. The cryo grenades are still his favorite, but the pulse and plasma ones are pretty nice too.

They only have to wait a couple of minutes for Kellogg’s Stealth Boy to finally wear off, and when they do, Kellogg is a _mess_. His face and chest are all but a pulpy mush with blodshot eyes, and while Ren isn’t squeamish, it’s bad enough that she almost pukes. Even Leo looks a little discomforted.

“Turn him over,” Ren asks in a pleading voice, turning her face away from the dead man. “Please, turn him over. I can’t look at that anymore.”

Leo obliges, flipping Kellogg to where he’s face down. The back of his head isn’t much better, but at least it’s not as bad as the front.

“So what are we doing here?” she asks, leaning down to get a closer look at what skin is left on the back of his bald head. There’s a long, thin scar running down the curve of his skull, and Ren wonders what’s hidden below it.

Leo scratches at the edges of a burn, gazing down at the dead merc. “I presume we should probably find out what he knows about out son and the Institute.”

Ren nods in agreement, staring down the scar for just a moment longer before unsheathing her knife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that if you would like an email every time this updates, subscribe! Every time I publish a new chapter, you'll get an email notification instead of having to check every few days to see if I've updated.


	15. Information/Entrance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for gore and the likes. They cut Kellogg's dead body open.
> 
> Also an emotional breakdown. If that kind of stuff bothers you, read with caution.

It comes, just as Leo’s been anticipating. Kellogg is dead, and Ren’s surprisingly okay. As okay as someone like her can be. She’s on the floor, delicately carving up Kellogg’s skull to dig out the weird bits she’s convinced rest under his scar tissue, while Leo’s busy flipping through the paper files that Kellogg left next to his computer.

There’s some particularly odd information that he’s scanning over, just little notes about Shaun and their time in Diamond City, when he hears the unpleasant sound of metal breaking. Leo glances over to see that her knife has snapped while she was digging in the back of Kellogg’s skull. Shifting, he keeps an eye on her when she doesn’t move.

It’s a little thing that tips her over, he’s found. And after all the shit they’ve been through, he’s surprised it took her this long to get to her breaking point.

He uncrosses his legs and shifts his weight on the top of the desk, still watching as she’s faced away from him, gripping the hilt of her now snapped knife. Her hand is trembling, and after a moment, he can see her back beginning to heave. Ren’s breath starts to echo in the semi-empty room. Leo slides off of the desk top as the first choked sob escapes her.

Leo kneels next to her in the drying blood, lightly curling an arm around her waist. “Let it out,” he murmurs, pressing her head to his shoulder.

Ren forces words out through her sobs, and he can’t really understand most of it. He gathers a few phrases, something like ‘insane world’, ‘my family’, ‘our fuckin’ baby’, and she says ‘too much’ entirely too often.

After she starts crying to hard to speak, he just holds her close and lets her get it out. She’s not wrong. He presumes she means they’ve been released into an insane world. This _is_ insane. They were happy with their little modern lives, and then they woke up to a world that has been bathed in nuclear fire and brought them back to the 1800’s, just with electricity and radiation this time.

‘My family’ is clear enough. She’s kept it bottled up, but he knows she’s still mourning. Her brother and his family were all she had in this world, and it’s likely they all died after the bombs. Her brother, sister-in-law, and all seven of their children. Leo himself, while not one to do much mourning, still feels the pain of loss for the friends he’s considered his family. Her family, too. He loved their nieces and nephews. Everyone they’ve ever loved are gone. Each other and their child is _all they have left_.

She doesn’t sound angry when she mentions their son. It’s pretty clear that she never bonded with him, but now that her head is clear, she at least seems to have some of her maternal instincts. Some. He’s still not sure how she feels about their son. Negative is probably still the answer to that. But she’s here with him at her own volition, looking for their kid, so that has to count for _something_.

Too much. Leo agrees with that. All of this is too goddamn much. He was working his ass off too much to provide for his family before the bombs dropped. She pushed herself too much to try to fit into the picture of a perfect mother when she felt (feels?) nothing for their son. Out here is too fucking much, having to fight every damn day just to ensure they’ll wake up in the morning. Not to mention the emotional burden that constantly weighs on them. This world they’ve been brought into is too much.

It’s almost half an hour before she calms down. Ren’s still sniffling and teary, but she’s at least able to mumble things to him without getting too choked up to speak.

“This is all too much.” she forces out, wiping her eyes with her fists. “It’s just problem after problem and it’s all piling up.”

“We’ll deal with out biggest issues one at a time,” he tells her, resting his cheek on the side of her head. Up close, they both reek of gunpowder and burnt leather. One of her stray tears wets his own face as he nuzzles in closer. “And what’s out biggest problem right now?”

“Shaun,” she says quietly, like the word tastes like sorrow.

“Incorrect. Out biggest problem is your broken knife. Solution? I let you borrow mine, and we replace yours when we get back to Diamond City.”

“We don’t have the money.”

Leo shakes his head a little, mussing up her already wild curls. “I found plenty enough caps in this place to replace a simple combat knife. After the knife, what’s out next biggest problem?”

Once again, she forces out, “Shaun.”

“Wrong again. Out next biggest problem is getting back to Diamond City and getting some rest. After that?”

“Shaun.”

He presses a light kiss to her head. “Strike three. Our next big problem is talking to Nick about all of this. There’s a _lot_ more for us to do before Shaun becomes our current biggest problem, and even after that, there are bigger problems after he’s safe with us.”

Ren doesn’t say anything, just stares off and sniffles. Nothing is going to make her feel better during her… episodes like this, but perhaps it’ll be some kind of soothing thought later on. Leo gives her one last good squeeze before getting up.

“Finish crying. Let it all out before we leave here. I’m going to finish reading all of his files, and when I’m done, if you need, I’ll finish carving up this fuck.”

She nods after a moment, and accepts his knife when he offers it out. Her broken blade clatters to the floor after a few moments, and he can hear her cursing under her breath as she works, still sniffling, still probably crying. But he doesn’t look at her.Gives her as much privacy as their circumstances will allow.

Eventually, once she’s quiet Leo does look back over at at her. Ren’s face is still red and blotchy, but all of her tear tracks have dried and the sniffles are pretty much gone. Kellogg’s head is flayed wide open, and she’s staring blankly at the bloody mess of his skull. Hm. The thin scars on Kellogg’s head made it look like whatever extra bits are in his head were closer to the surface.

“I can’t get his skull open,” she tells him, voice still thick. “Not without breaking your knife too.”

“I can crack him open if you’d like.”

She shakes her head. “I found something else in him. ‘Nother scar. I’m gonna cut that out first.”

Neither of them are sure what she pulls out of the back of his neck, but it’s got some bright blue glow to it. She swipes some of the viscera off and reads out its name. Pain inhibitor. Interesting. No wonder he just kept going after getting shot in the fucking face. She turns it over in her hands, before setting it on the floor. No other place to put it.

Leo leans over the computer, using the password he took off of Kellogg to get into it. He’s skimmed over every file the man has to offer, so now it’s time to comb through his other data. Of course, he only just gets it loaded up when Ren catches his attention.

“Is it just me,” she asks, after clearing the shit out of her throat, “or does his gun arm look kind of weird to you?”

Once again, Leo slides off of the desk and comes to her side. He pulls out his glasses, thankfully undamaged from the day’s events, and takes a good long look at Kellogg’s corpse. Judging between the two, he can kind of see what she means. There’s a thin, fine scar on Kellogg's arm that can just barely be seen in the light, and his right arm is certainly much more… swollen than the other one? Leo isn’t sure how he’d describe it. It’s _bigger_ than the left arm. Something has to be resting under the skin.

“Flay it open,” Leo tells her, giving the skin a long look. “It’s the only way to know.”

There’s another piece of metal in his arm, longer and vaguely reminiscent of a power fist. She has to cut away everything that’s grown around it, and he’s the first to catch the name on it.

“Limb actuator?” He shakes his head slowly. “Man seems like he was more metal than flesh.”

“Cyborg,” She tells him, a small smile pulling at her face. Good, good, the mood is hopefully passing.

She sits by while Leo takes the time to break Kellogg’s skull open. He’s still not entirely convinced that there’s anything in the man’s head, but if it’ll make his wife feel better to dig around in Kellogg's brains, he’s more than happy to let her.

While she cuts his brains up, he looks around for something to put all of those metal bits in. Nick will probably be interested in looking at them. There isn’t much to use, but he eventually empties out a first-aid kit and lines the bottom of it with newspaper. It’s got an airtight seal on it, at least. No dirt or dust will be getting in through the cracks.

“Found something,” she says, holding something up with a bloodied hand. “I have no fucking clue what it is.”

“Me either,” he agrees after getting a good look at it. It’s a chunk of brain for sure, with wires and shit sticking out of it, but he’s a lawyer, not a doctor. He’s not no idea what exactly it is. “Put it in here. We’ll let Nick have a look at it when we get back to the city.”

“Need a sink,” she grumbles, gently tucking the brain bit in with the rest of Kellogg’s metal. She’ll probably just have Leo pour water over her hands in a while. “Anyways, have you read that terminal yet?”

“Nope, I was waiting for you.” He settles in front of the terminal, putting the password back in for when she’s ready to read. Damn thing timed out.

“Read it to me?”

Or not.

“The boy, Shaun, successfully delivered back to the Institute, payment received,” Leo reads out loud, listening to her snap the first-aid kit shut. “New orders to track down renegade, gathered reinforcements, cleared out and secured Fort Hagen. We move out soon.”

“So he wasn’t lying,” Ren says, getting to her feet. She holds the case flat and offers it out to him. It’ll be safer in his pack.

“It seems our son is indeed with the Institute. Wonderful.”

 

 

 

 

 

The elevator that they couldn’t reach earlier comes open with the rest of the doors when Leo uses the terminal. They sort of want to explore the place a little more now, but they’ve got a brain chunk in their possession that isn’t going to stay good for very long, and it’s already going to be late when they get back to D.C if they leave now. But they’ll come back. Too many good supplies to _not_ come back.

“Alright,” Leo says, adjusting his pack. He gestures towards the elevator. “Ladies first and all of that.”

Ren obligingly gets on before he does, and it’s a relatively quick ride up to… wherever the elevator is taking them. It feel like up, at least, which is where they need to be going.

The doors open after a moment, and they’re met with the smell of fresh Commonwealth air. So this took them outside? Leo goes out ahead of her and toys with the terminal waiting, and after a moment, the door hisses open, revealing the setting sun. Christ, they were in there for a long time, weren’t they?

There’s fresh air, the cawing of crows, and… He makes a face, and after a moment, she can tell why. Stepping forward a little bit, she tilts her head in the direction of the opened door.

“Is that… is that a _helicopter_?” she asks.

Taking her by the hand, he leads her out the door. Coming in off of the horizon is a goddamn _blimp_ , covered in bright lights and functioning vertibirds. She grips his hand harder, watching in a mix of fascination and horror.

“CITIZENS OF THE COMMONWEALTH,” a voice booms from it. “DO NOT INTERFERE.”

The two trade looks, and for once in his fucking life, Leo looks a little startled. The Commonwealth doesn’t have tech this good. Neither of them have seen a functional vertibird since before they were put on ice. What the fuck is this? Both turn their gazes back to the blimp as it drifts across the sky, spouting more of its message.

“OUR INTENTIONS ARE PEACEFUL.”

“Bullshit they are,” Ren says, watching a few of the birds undock and fly ahead of the blimp. Peaceful intentions never begin with an invasion.

Leo holds tight to her hand, subtly putting himself in front of her. He usually only does that when there’s a threat in front of them, but then again…

“WE ARE THE BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me a week to get this out! I was having some trouble with the next chapter and didn't want to post this one if the next one was gonna take 1000 years to complete.
> 
> Also, one more chapter to this act!


	16. Little Talks: END ACT 1

“Want one?”

Leo shakes his head, seating himself on their bed in the Dugout. “Nah. No need to waste a stim. It’s going to scar all the same.”

Ren hesitates, then nods in agreement after a moment, tucking the stim back into her own pack. The worst of their burns were already dealt with at Hagen, though the medicine ran out before it could fix any of the more minor things, like the heavy bruising and cuts from shrapnel. She sits down across from him, pulling the bag onto her lap.

“Do me after I do you?” she asks, watching the way a sly smile creeps onto his face.

“I’ll do you anytime you’d like, my love,” he tells her, letting his voice drop in just the slightest.

She rolls her eyes, pulling out her little doctor’s bag. “Maybe when I’ve had the chance to blot today from my mind. Now I’ll need you to hold still.” She takes a pair of tweezers from the bag and pulls out a small bottle of liquid antiseptic. “We need to get the metal out of our faces.”

Leo hums in agreement, and winces when the cold points of the tweezers first touch his face. It’s a long, unpleasant half hour of her reopening cuts and digging bits of debris from his face and neck, and the most unpleasant part comes when she soaks a clean rag in antiseptic and wipes all of his open wounds down with it. However, once it’s done, he gets to inflict the same on her. If only Doc Sun were up at this hour. Leo would gladly pay too many caps to have someone who’s actually read a medical textbook dig metal out of his body.

Once they’re done with the worst of their injuries, they strip down. Both are bruised, though she’s a lot worse than he is. Her face is still a mess of purple and yellow discoloration, and her left eye is half swollen shut. Down her sides looks pretty nasty, and there’s one that’s nearly black marring her thigh. His bruising is more focused on his ribs, as the darkness on his arms was fixed when they got rid of their laser burns.

Making a face, Leo reaches for his own bag. “Maybe you should use one after all. That bruising is really bad on you. You’re not going to be able to sleep like that, Renee,” he says, holding up a finger when she opens her mouth to argue, “and don’t argue with me.”

She pouts for a moment. “You should have seen your back just now. Remember that synth that broke its baton over your fucking spine? Yeah, you’re not looking too hot yourself,” Ren points out. “You need one too.”

Leo wants to disagree, but he shifts a little bit and decides that she’s right. Just the movement hurts, now that he’s focused on it. So they use stims, and while it takes away the worst of the bruising and seals up the nastiest facial cuts, they’re both still pretty beaten up. Regardless, he runs an appreciative hand down her side. She’s damn gorgeous, even with her body battered and bruised.

“Today sucked,” she tells him as they settle into the bed, curled around each other’s bodies to share the comfort of the other’s warmth.

“Mm-hmm,” he agrees, resting his forehead against hers.

“First thing in the morning, we’re going over to Nick’s?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Leo feels her nod against him. Her hand gets a hold on the back of his thigh, keeping him tucked close. They’re both achy and pressing against each other’s sore spots, but after the day they’ve had, the closeness in a necessary comfort.

“First thing tomorrow,” he assures her, thinking of the air-tight kit resting on their dresser, full of the tech that was inside of Kellogg's body just hours ago. First thing in the morning.

~~~

First thing in the morning, they’re too fucking sore to get out of bed. It takes a lot of effort to drag their carcasses out of bed, and when they finally manage to force themselves outside, the other residents avoid them like the plague. They look like shit, undoubtedly, all bruised to hell and battered up. Doc Sun looks like he’s going to blow a gasket when he catches sight of the two of them.

But for the most part, they’re ignored. The whole city is in a tizzy, whispering among each other about the entrance of the Brotherhood. Apparently none of them have seen anything like this before, either. So this Brotherhood shit is probably bad news. Whatever it is, Leo’s very much certain he’ll burn that bridge when they get to it. He’s got no interest in this Brotherhood garbage.

Piper is already in the agency when they arrive, pestering Nick with a small notebook in hand.

“Come on, Nicky,” Piper says, tugging at the sleeve of his coat. “I'm just asking for your opinion. It'd be a great quote.”

Nick shakes his head and gives her a stern glare. “They’re my clients, Piper. Why don't you learn not to snoop on other people’s private affairs?”

Leo clears his throat, drawing the other two out of their discussion. “Piper, Nick,” he says by way of greeting.

“Well, well. Speak of the devil.” Piper looks them over, taking in their injuries, though her eyes finally settle on the pristine first-aid kit in Ren’s hands.

Nick gives them a look as well, searching them over for a moment before frowning. “You're back. And... not with your son. What happened?”

Leo lets out a short, humorless laugh while Ren opts to keep quiet. He doesn’t feel too keen on telling Nick _anything_ while loudmouth Piper is here to get the scoop to sell to the whole city. But perhaps she can be useful. Her brain works quick, perhaps she can help them finish this puzzle as they get the pieces.

“You were right, Nick. Kellogg _did_ have our boy, but that’s not all. He was working with the Institute. He gave them Shaun.” He grits his teeth, pushing down the sudden irritation growing in him.

The air in the agency grows solemn and heavy. Somewhere upstairs, they can hear Ellie suck in a deep breath through her teeth. Piper grows a little pale, her eyes going wide, and Nick lets out a long exhale. Leo slides a hand down Ren’s back, curling a finger into one of her beltloops. He doesn’t like the pitying looks that they’re getting, but he deals with it.

“The Institute?” Piper asks disbelievingly. She takes in a deep breath and lets it go slow. “Hoo boy… I've been investigating these creeps for over a _year_ now. The Commonwealth's boogeyman. Feared and hated by everyone. Sometimes they snatch people in the middle of the night.” Giving a quick glance in Nick’s direction, she carries on. “And sometimes they leave old synths behind to remind us that they're out there. But to this day, there's one thing no one really knows.”

“Where the Institute actually is,” Nick supplies. “Or how to get in.”

Piper gives an enthusiastic nod of agreement, but still looks a little off-color. “Exactly. But there's one person who must know, right? The guy who just handed them Shaun.”

“Well there’s a problem there...” Ren says while scratching at the back of her neck, trailing her sentence off. Nick gives her a raised brow, and Ellie comes around the corner, her ever-faithful clipboard in hand. Ren averts her eyes.

“Whatever is being plotted here isn’t going to work. He’s dead, Nick,” Leo tells him very flatly, without a single shred of remorse.

Nick purses his lips and exhales heavily. “Yeah. Figures the Institute's only man on the outside wouldn't be the type to be taken alive.”

“So a murderer and a kidnapper gets his brains blown out by an avenging parent.” Piper lets out a sigh so loud it almost sounds exaggerated and pulls a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. “It'd be a great ending if we didn't still have the biggest mystery in the Commonwealth to solve.”

Ren shakes her head, taking the cigarette that Piper offers her way. All this stress is going to turn her into a fucking smoker, and that sucks because the tobacco out here tastes like the ass end of an ass. She waits until it’s lit and she gets a good puff off if it to speak. “He wasn't going to talk. Even if we _did_ have a way of bringing him alive.“

There’s another long silence in the room, the only real sound being Ellie frantically scribbling notes. She glances up and looks between the four of them before settling on Nick, giving her boss a quizzical look.

“’Gets his brains blown out...’” Nick repeats, gazing off into space. “Huh... His brains. You know, we may not need the man at all.”

Piper gives him a side-long look, taking half a step back and looking a bit nervous. Neither Ren nor Leo can tell if it’s in jest or not. “You're talking crazy here Nick. Got a fault in the ole' subroutines?” she asks, glancing back to the two of them.

Shaking his head, Nick turns his full attention to the two of them. “Look, there's a place in Goodneighbor called the Memory Den. Relive the past moments in your mind as clear as the day they happened. If _anyone_ could get a dead brain to sing, it'll be Doctor Amari, the mind behind the memories.”

“Ellie mentioned Goodneighboor to us when we went out to find you,” Ren tells him, passing the half-smoked cigarette over to Leo. “But we haven’t really had too much time to go visit.”

Letting out a long stream of smoke, Leo asks, “What exactly are you saying, Nick?”

The synth comes closer to the desk they’re in front of, eyes flitting around like he’s thinking. “Let's see... I guess we're going to need a piece of Kellogg's brain. Enough gray matter to bring to Amari and find out if this is going to work...”

“Jesus, Nick, gross! Seriously?” Piper exclaims, immediately looking a little green at the suggestion.

He turns slightly and gives the woman a stern look. “I know it's grisly, but what choice do we have? We got no leads. Nothing. That old merc's brain just might have all the secrets we need to know.”

Leo gives Ren a nudge, gently giving the first-aid kit a knock with his elbow. He gives her a glance, somewhere between fondness and being impressed.

“Actually,” Ren pipes up, getting a tighter hold to the box held against her stomach. “I think we already have something. Kellogg had this... thing attached to his head. We cut it out.”

That’s enough to make Nick finally come around, crowding the entry of the agency even further. She gives him the case when he holds his hands out, and he’s the only one who doesn’t immediately recoil at the stench of the dried blood that wafts out and fills the room. Ellie even gags a little.

Looking inside, it seems the brain has held up remarkably well. No signs of decay or anything like that. He takes the brain chunk out with his sharp, claw-like fingers and holds it up to the light for a better look.

“Cybernetics, huh? We may have just won the lottery.”

A heavy metallic groan from the other end of the room draws the couple’s attention away from Nick. Piper’s perched on Nick’s desk, looking very intently at the two them so she doesn’t have to see the brain bit. “Whether we're riding this crazy brain train or not, we can't _all_ go running across the Commonwealth. So, who's coming with you?”

“I have to go to the Memory Den either way, if I'm gonna introduce you to Amari. But if you want to head there together, just say so.” Nick offers, setting the brain back in the box before latching it shut.

“Go on ahead of us so that the doctor knows we’re coming,” Leo instructs, then turns to Piper. “You’re staying here. Ellie’s already done quite a bit of work, but the more information we have coming in, the better. Keep your ear to the ground.”

“All right,” Nick agrees. “See you at the Den. Don't worry. We're gonna get your boy back. Just a few more steps.”

Nick gives them a firm nod, then steps around Ellie to his bedroom. Presumably to gather his things. Piper looks like she wants to argue with the decision, but her shoulders droop after a moment and she sighs.

“Alright, fine. While you guys are out, I'll be doing some research of my own. I'll be at the Publick if you need me.”

“I’ll keep going through what we’ve got here,” Ellie offers, brushing past the two of them to her desk. There’s already mountains of folders and loose papers. She’s got her hands full, and if Piper’s mess of a house is anything to go by, so does she.

With little else to do, Leo and Ren leave the office hand in hand, the little box safe and snug in her bag.


	17. Intermission 1

“Nobody involved in a conflict thinks they’re the villain.” 

― David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders


	18. BEGIN ACT 2: Break/Freedom Trail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! Welcome to act two, where shit is just as fucky as before! Thank you for being patient while I took a break and worked on this.
> 
> Minor warning for some non-explicit death

“I need a break,” Ren tells her husband the moment they’re out of Diamond City’s gates. “This is all too damn wild for me right now.” She looks ahead, watching a member of Diamond City security patrol past a guard post. “Let’s just… go do something. We’ll meet up with Nick in a couple of days, say we got caught up in some trouble.”

“And what do you suppose we do, Renee?” Leo asks. He’s not exactly going to tell her no, but if she can’t come up with anything good, then he’s going to steer her towards the next city.

She shrugs, and pauses to flip through the notes in her Pip Boy. She left herself a garbed note not too long ago. Something about following the Freedom Trail and ‘railroad?????’ is all the information that she left for her future self to decipher. Hm.

“We could walk the Freedom Trail and see how it looks?”

Leo gives her a look. The quiet stretches on long enough that she feels like it’s stupid idea and is about to say never mind, but then he shrugs his shoulders. “If you want to smell Swan’s rotting corpse again, be my guest.”

~~~

Swan’s corpse is… _bad_. Much like Leo figured, it popped like a beached whale, but thankfully doesn’t seem to be in their way. Not so thankfully, it reeks to high fucking hell.

“I would have loved to have had an apartment here,” she tells him, looking around at the buildings lining the sky. Other than the smell, this place is almost as beautiful as it was pre-war. “Too bad I picked that house in Sanctuary.”

“It let us survive,” Leo points out. “Now where are we going?”

Guiding him by his hand, Ren makes a wide ark around the common and leads him to a fountain that’s somehow managed to stay upright for over 200 years. She still remembers where the Freedom Trail starts, at least. When they reach the fountain, a motion activated pod hisses open and a protection emerges from within, lazily trundling over to the two of them.

“Welcome, patriots, to Boston Common,” it greets, stopping a few feet in front of them. “The start of the Freedom Trail. Feast your ears and learn more about the historic Freedom Trail and learn the history of Boston Common.”

“You’re a tour guide?” Leo asks, looking the beaten thing up and down.

“ERROR,” it announces. “RESPONSE NOT RECOGNIZED.”

Ren smiles at it. Man, she misses robots. “Can you tell me about the Freedom Trail?”

The bot emits a few beeps before it speaks again. “Starting here at Boston Common, follow the red path as it winds its way through our great city's streets. Markers on the trail are placed at many famous historic sites.” It beeps again, then makes a sound like a tape rewinding. “See Paul Revere's House, the Old North Church, the Old State House, Bunker Hill, and many more!”

With that, it turns around and waddles back to its charging pod, ignoring everything Ren tries to ask. She frowns a little, but heads over to the beginning of the trail. Red path, she remembers that too. Glancing down, a splotch of red on the trail marker catches her eye.

“Seven, A,” she reads out to Leo, who joins her a moment later.

The seven is poorly drawn in the blank center of the marker, with the letter ‘A’ crudely circled. It’s been partially washed away by the weather, but still very much readable.

“Seven, A,” Leo agrees, looking back to her. “What do you think it means, love of mine?”

She gives him a grin. “I think it means we should follow the trail.”

Swan’s corpse does turn out to be in the way this time, which fucking sucks. Ren’s certain she’s never going to be able to get the reek of rotten mutant guts out of her boots. The second marker isn’t too far away, but far enough from the body that she isn’t gagging the entire time. It stops in front of the Massachusetts State House, with this marker reading ‘4,L’.

“Are you writing this down, or should I?” she asks, crouching to get a better look.

“I presume you’d be doing it, since this was your idea.”

“Fair enough.” She at least pauses long enough to read the plaque. Since there’s no danger Leo stands behind her and reads it over her shoulder. Huh, this place used to be John Hancock’s cow pasture. Neat.

Looping them back around, the trail next leads to the Old Granary burial grounds. A few ghouls rise from among the graves and rush them, but Leo deals with them swiftly and quietly with his knife. He looks down at the mess of ghoul viscera on his armor with a frown while his wife checks out the next trail marker. This marker has ‘2, A’ marked on it. Ren takes note of it in her Pip Boy.

This plaque is slightly less interesting. Theoldest surviving burial ground in Boston, John Hancock and Samuel Adams buried here, along with victims of the Boston Massacre. Someone named Emilia Butler was buried here too, but Ren has no idea who she is.

Leo shoves her out of sight when they get close to Goodneighbor. Nick’s passing through the gate when they approach, having dealt with the super mutants along the way and saving the two the trouble. Still, they stay out of the way for a few moments until they’re sure Nick isn’t going to come back out. Don’t wanna get caught slacking off a second time. Both are surprised, honestly, that they made it here the same time as Nick. Even with all the trouble along the way, he should have beaten them here. Ah well.

“What’s this one?” Ren asks, more to herself as she gets closer to the marker. Leo, ever-vigilant, takes care of the stray dogs that rush them while she stands out in the wide open, unheeding of danger, taking notes.

“What is it?” he asks, wiping blood from his knife.

“Six O. Why do you think this marker is here?”

Leo looks up, trying to get a good look over the high fence protecting the city. “I presume because that’s where the Old State House is.”

Ren hums. “Makes sense.”

The trail leads them over a pile of rubble to the Old Corner Bookstore. Ren’s almost over it when a hand grabs her, and she does her best not to scream. There’s a group of raiders nearby, and she’s not going to test Leo’s patience any further by drawing their attention. He handles the ferals quickly and quietly, discarding their corpses as discretely as he can.

A peek inside confirms that it’s half destroyed, with half of the second floor collapsed in. What a shame. The place was damn nice. But she notes down the message (3, I), and they sneak past Haymarket Hall and continue on the red bricked path.

Faneuil Hall is crawling with super mutants. Across the way, where they stand, there’s several corpses of dead raiders and some newly dead ghouls. It makes for some good loot, at least.

“So what the fuck do we do now?” Ren asks in a loud whisper, watching a brute of a mutant trundle along with his hound waddling close behind. “I’m pretty sure I just saw a suicider walk past the back of the building, and one of those up on the scaffolding has a missile launcher. It’s broad daylight, we can’t just sneak past.”

After thinking for a moment, Leo shrugs. “Got nothing this time.”

“Thanks,” she says dryly, giving him a glare from the corner of her eye.

“This is your little outing, not mine. You point, I kill it. Otherwise, it’s all up to _you_.”

Out of spite, she points at the dog. “Then kill it.”

Leo turns and gives her a long look, his eyes narrowed in just the slightest. He then raises to his feet and pulls the shotgun from his back. “Fine.”

He kills it. And when the mutants rush him, he kills those too. She picks off the suicider before it can even get halfway up the alley out of courtesy, because she likes her husband not blown to bits. Leo does most of the work, though, and comes back to her a good fifteen minutes later spattered with mutant blood. Several missiles jut out of an open part of his pack.

“There. Now go check the damn trail marker.”

“Five, R,” she calls to him after checking it. “Alright, let’s go.”

They’re next led to Paul Revere’s house, which has a few raiders in it. Those are easy enough to deal with. The mutant waiting out front with his two hounds provides a little more trouble, mostly because the hounds raise the alarm at the same time, and you know? The sounds resonates in just such a way that it makes the ears want to bleed.

She marks down the code (8,D, which she laugh at because it looks like a face), and heads over to the plaque. Hm, cute. She scans it over once more before taking a deep breath.

“Built in 1680, this wooden building is the oldest structure in all of Boston,” she reads out loud to Leo, who’s busy wiping as much blood off of his face as he can. “In 1770 this home was bought by famed patriot Paul Revere. Paul Revere dwelled here with his family, including his 16 children, until 1800.”

“I’d just shoot myself after the third kid to save myself the trouble,” Leo mutters while stuffing the cloth into his pocket, and she cracks up.

“Anyway. Paul Revere was living here when he made his famous midnight ride to Lexington and Concord to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that Redcoats were en route to arrest them and seize the militia weaponry.”

“Wonderful history lesson,” Leo says, voice flat enough that she can tell he’s anything but impressed. “I presume you’ve marked down the message?”

“Mm-hmm.”

He sounds almost relieved when he says, “Good. If I’m not mistaken, there’s only one or two more stops and I’d like to be done with this.”

Their last stop is the Old North Church. It’s still beautiful after all this time, still _standing_ after almost 600 years. The bricks are beginning to crumble and the world around it looks like hell, but the church itself is a magnificent sight. She paces forward and skims over the plaque. Didn’t really have a chance with a few of the other buildings.

“This has the tallest steeple in all of Boston,” Ren says, craning her head back to get a good look at it. “Since this is the end, wanna go up there?”

Leo shrugs. “Sure. Why not. But we’re heading back to Goodneignbor after this.”

She agrees and marks down their last piece before they head inside. It’s musty and dark as soon as they open the door to the entry hall, with rubble from collapsed sections littering the floor. What a damn shame. But it’s old, and since there’s been no upkeep on it, she understands how its already managed to crumble into such a state.

Leo quietly points out that there’s lit lanterns in here. Recently lit. The fuel tank of the lantern is mostly full and there’s just the faintest whiff of kerosene on the air. Someone is here.

He lets out a quiet noise and nudges her, pointing at the floor. “Not a bit of dust here,” he murmurs. “It’s been cleaned recently. Whoever is here has put in a lot of effort to erase their tracks.”

“Astute insight.”

“You don’t even know what astute means.”

She turns and gives him a glare. In a mocking, over-exaggerated Southern accent, she says, “Yer brain dun did some smart thinkin’s there, Leo!”

“Keep your voice down. Have you put together whatever those makers were?”

“Trying,” she mutters, looking down at her Pip Boy. Outside was 1,R, so the first piece is ‘R’. 2,A, 3,I… “Railroad?” She has to stop herself from mocking it. Of course someone called ‘Railroad’ would use that as a… code of sorts? The people are uncreative.

She holds her Pip Boy up for him, far enough away that he doesn’t have to get his glasses out to look. Leo’s eyes scan over the letters for a moment.

“You’re correct,” he agrees. “But what is it code for?”

Ren shrugs. “Fuck if I know.”

“Then let’s figure it out. If this is some elaborate raider or gunner bullshit, I want a cut of whatever they’re hiding.”

Inside the church itself, there’s more rubble and collapsed sections from the second floor. Ghoul corpses litter the ground, though they both spot a few living counterparts. Those have to be dealt with quietly, so that if anyone’s here, they don’t raise the alarm. So slicing them up instead of blasting their faces off will have to do.

Ren looks at the entryway in the back almost longingly, figuring that the door beyond is the one that leads up to the steeple. All she wants to do is go sit up on the rotting wood, hang her feet over the edge and hold hands with her husband. Look over Boston for a little while. Leo nudges her out of her thoughts and points out a door from near where they came, glowing fungus lighting the dim area. An entry to the basement, presumably. There’s probably nothing of monetary value in the steeple, so she lets him guide her to the other door. They’ll check out the steeple later.

Much to Leo’s disdain, more ghouls wait in the slight maze of the basement. But as he’s disposing of them, he points out that a lot of this path is recently made. It should have been bricked up solid hundreds of years ago, and yet there are piles of broken brick and dead-ends. And a few pairs of poorly masked footprints in the dirt.

“Gunners,” he speculates, still keeping his voice quiet. “Even the smartest raiders are too stupid to know how to cover their tracks.”

It takes half an hour of stumbling through the dark maze of rubble, ghouls, and dead-ends, but Leo and Ren finally make it to the end. It’s a little better lit here, with the glow of fungus brightening the place up. Neither are fooled into thinking it’s _actually_ a dead end.

There’s another Freedom Trail marker mounted up on the wall, set into concrete and connected to some white bits and red wires that disappear into the wall. There’s a single bit of red on this one. It’s a small arrow pointing upward, very concisely set on the letter ‘N’.

“The hell is this?” she asks, reaching out to touch it. The center of it feels like it gives, so she pushes it a little harder. It makes a small click, and then gives a noise that reminds her of some kind of error sound.

“See if it turns,” Leo suggests.

It does indeed turn, through she has to put some real elbow grease into getting it to move. It’s easier to have Leo do it. She has him turn it to an ‘R’ first and presses the center, hoping that maybe it’ll work. The button clicks, and it’s all she hears. No error. They try an ‘A’ next, and get the same results. They work their way through the code, listening for any more error noises.

“Last one,” Leo says. His words echo loudly off the walls, though he speaks quietly.

Ren gives him a sure nod. “Last one.”

She gives the button another push, locking in on the final letter. There’s a different sound this time. Something moves behind the wall they’re facing, grinding and shifting as Leo draws his gun. It’s his nice silenced pistol for once, the gun he’d wanted but never used. The sound changes, shifting to something like gears turning. The wall next to them hisses, and she instinctively takes a step back as it falls inward somewhat, then disappears halfway into the wall.

There’s a gap left just large enough for them to pass through one at a time, and Leo opts to go through first, gun raised. A single candle lights the way, sitting on a lip where the bricks drop away into darkness. Neither can see the floor below it. Neither like this.

Ren nudges Leo, and gestures back the way they came. It’s not to late for the two of them to pull back. This feels _bad_.

Leo shakes his head. He lightly bumps her shoulder with his, and nods into the darkness. _Let’s go._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, if you're not checking out my [crawl out tag on tumblr](http://iwillpooponthefloor.tumblr.com/tagged/crawl-out), you're missing out! You don't have to be following me on tumblr to see it. I post little rough draft snippets every now and then, which gives you sneak peeks at parts of future chapters. 
> 
> Anyway, I'd just like to thank you guys again for sticking with me during this break. Life is rough, I keep getting sick and depression enjoys pinching me in the face. But I'm getting back into the groove of this fic again, and I assure you, there's far more to come! I hope you're all enjoying so far!


	19. Welcome/Tradecraft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for general death. I tried not to be too graphic with dead bodies this time around

Renee’s sense of hearing is as good as the average person’s, but Leo’s is better. He’s slow moving forward, having just heard the slightest shuffling of feet from further in. A half second later, a voice hisses something like ‘ _now_!’. Three people at the least. Small for a gunner group, but not unheard of. He’s not frightened of gunners. The less there are, the easier they are to pick off.

Giving his wife a light tug, Leo stops just before the candles and the dip. He can kind of vaguely see the floor from here. It’s a foot long drop, maybe a foot and a half. Something moves behind him, but he’s certain it’s only Renee reaching for her gun-

A set of lights comes on, blindingly bright. Leo’s gun is trained on the first person he sees, a redheaded woman in the middle of a group that he correctly estimated to be three. She looks tired, but stern in the wrinkle of her brow. She’s flanked by a punk looking woman aiming a minigun, and some scrawny man with a pistol in his grip. From the way she holds herself, the woman in the middle seems important.

“ _Stop. Right. There_ ,” the redhead demands, unwavering in the face of of the pistol trained on her head. “You went through a lot of effort to arrange this meeting. But before we go any further, answer my questions. Who the hell are you?”

Leo stares her down, very pointedly curling his finger around the trigger. “Why don’t you tell us who you are first.”

The woman regards the two of them for a moment, taking in Leo’s blood spattered armor and the barrel of his gun aimed at her face, glances over Ren’s surprised expression. She crosses her arms over her chest and stares him down. He can tell she’s debating on whether or not to speak.

“In a world full of suspicion, treachery, and hunters- we're the synths' only friends.” Tilting her chin up, looking overly important and self-satisfied, she proclaims, “We're the Railroad. So answer _my_ question.”

“We followed the Freedom Trail and it lead us here,” Ren pipes up from behind him, while Leo rolls his eyes at her. This woman sounds self-righteous in the worst kind of way. He hopes Renee isn’t going to buy into this shit. He doesn’t personally have anything against synths, but he’s certainly not going to go along with his wife being high and mighty about saving an over-glorified exoskeleton, or, ahem, a Gen-1.

“We’re not your enemy,” Ren adds, then lightly nudges her husband. “Leo, put your gun down.”

He stays silent, keeping his pistol trained on the woman. He’s not putting shit down. Not with a fucking minigun aimed at them. Aimed at _her_. He’s not even going to pretend to humor her, keeping his finger curled on the trigger. Ren sighs, but doesn’t ask him again.

Still looking down her nose at the two of them, the redhead woman focuses her attention on Ren instead. Probably sees her as the more sympathetic of the to of them. “And you just _happened_ to guess the password to the secret door? Right.” Pursing her already thin lips, she gives them another long look. She takes no offense to the gun trained on her skull. It’s clear he’s only protecting the woman. “It's clear you're not with the Institute. But who told you how to contact us?”

Ren blinks. Resisting the urge to look at the stupid little note she left herself, she answers honestly. “I heard some people talking about the Railroad and the Freedom Trail. I made a note of it, and then...” she trails off, shrugging her shoulders. She gestures around the place. “Here we are.”

“I see.”

The punk looking woman tilts her head to the side, her stark white hair falling over her shoulder when she does. Her grip on the minigun is unwavering. Goddamn she’s fucking strong. The guy with the pistol, however looks like his arm is getting tired. If it comes to it, Leo will shoot the redhead first, take out the man, and deal with the punk woman after. Renee will be shoved somewhere out of the way before it comes to that.

Redhead looks like she’s scowling, but Leo’s sure it’s just how her face looks. He himself constantly looks like he’s pissed. Ren nudge him again, doesn’t say anything this time, but he still keeps his gun up. He’s not putting his down until they put theirs down. Especially not now that there’s a man emerging from somewhere behind the three already in front of them.

“I'm Desdemona, and I'm the leader of the Railroad,” Redhead says finally. “And you-” Her attention snaps to the man, startled by his sudden appearance. A hardfrown pulls at her mouth. “Deacon, where've you been?”

The newer man, Deacon, gives an easy smile. Ren wonders for a moment if he’s blind, wearing sunglasses down here and everything. “You're having a party. What gives with my invitation?” he asks. Ren catches the faintest hints of sarcasm in his tone.

“I need intel,” Desdemona bites out. “Who is this?”

Leo sighs through is nose, feeling the little bit of patience he’s got beginning to leave. His arm is starting to ache.

“Wow. News flash, boss, these guys are _kind of_ a big deal out there.” He looks at the two of them, and though they can’t see his eyes, Leo can feel the man’s gaze lingering on him. “You're the one rebuilding the Minutemen out of Sanctuary, right?” He nods at Leo.

Leo grunts in response. That’s not exactly wrong. He _is_ rebuilding the Minutemen, he supposes. He’s already helped recruit a half dozen settlements into the cause, and has helped Preston get the word out. Preston calls him ‘General’. Realizing he’s not getting any kind of verbal response from Leo, Deacon turns his attention to Ren.

“Aaaand, as if that wasn’t enough…” Something like amusement pulls at his mouth as he looks over Ren. “Nick Valentine was in a jam, as usual. But word is you bailed him out. _And_ talked your way past Skinny Malone, too.”

Ren nods, shrugs a little. More like she talked her way past Darla, but still. Same sentiments. Once again, Deacon’s head turns as he looks between the two of them.

“Not to mention the Railroad owes the two of you a crate, hell, a _truckload_ , of Nuka-Cola for what you did to Kellogg. He was our public enemy number one.” He nods in a final sort of way, crosses his arms. He sounds genuinely impressed.

Desdemona gives him a sidelong look, eyes narrowed. “So you're vouching for them?”

“Yes. Trust me, they’repeople we want on our side.” Deacon nods once, firm, and Leo sees the man’s hair shift. Wig, probably.

She purses her lips once more. Her eyes stay on Leo for a long time, then Ren. There’s too much going on in her expression for either of them to know what she’s thinking. “That changes things,” Desdemona says after a long silence, the razor’s edge easing up in her tone. “I don't know what, if anything, you've heard out there about us. So let’s start with the basics. You _do_ know what a synth is, right?”

Ren shrugs a little, giving the ‘so-so’ gesture with her hand. “Eh. Kind of. Most of the ones we’ve come across were Gen-1 and 2, but Ni-, eh, a friend sort of told us what Gen-3’s are.” She hip-checks Leo a moment later. “Seriously, put your gun down.”

“No.” His voice is firm.

“You’re making things kind of difficult here, babe,” she whispers, though it echos.

“I don’t give a damn how difficult I’m making things,” he says in a normal tone, maintaining eye contact with Desdemona. “Not when there’s a gun pointed at you.”

Desdemona shifts her weight, but doesn’t call them off. Instead, she turns her attention back to Ren. This woman has balls of steel to not be quaking in her boots by this point, he’ll give her that. He’s clearly not someone anyone wants aiming a gun at them.

“The Institute created them. Synthetic humans. They're mostly organic, part machine. Somewhere along the line they became more than just constructs. They think, they feel, and they act just like you and me.” Desdemona shakes her head. “The Institute treats synths as property. As tools.”

“That’s kinda fucked up.”

Deacon lightly nudges past his boss, stepping own into the drop in the floor. He heads over to a small alcove in the brick and reaches for his pocket, settling against the crumbling wall. All he pulls out is a pack of cigarettes, so Leo doesn’t redirect his aim at the man.

“More than ‘kinda’,” Desdemona says, but nods in agreement nonetheless. “So we seek to free the synths from their bondage. Give them a chance at a real life.”

Ren hums. “Sounds like something I could get behind.”

“Then I have a question for you. The only question that matters. Would you risk your life for your fellow man?” She pauses for half a second. “Even if that man is a synth?”

“I mean...” Ren shrugs her shoulders slowly, making a face. “I risk my life for people every day. I don’t care if it's a human or a synth, but I’m not gonna like… Go absolutely out of my way, you know? Not going to jump in front of a speeding bullet just because they’re a synth, but not going to like, scorn them for being one? If I’m making any sense? I’ll treat them like any other human.”

Desdemona nods, seeming to accept this as a suitable answer. “And you?” she asks, turning to Leo.

He remains stone faced. “I don’t risk myself for anyone but her, and even then, there are limits.” Beside him, Ren makes a mock-offended noise.

“No shame in that,” Desdemona says, surprising him. “Every person needs to know what they're willing to die for. It might be best if you kept your distance from us. Not for our sake, but for yours.” Turning her attention back to Ren, she continues. “ _You_ said you wanted to save synths. But right now we don't have time to train up a new agent. There are, however, other valuable ways you can contribute. See Deacon for details. You're free to go.”

And just like that, the weapons aimed at Leo and Ren are lowered. Desdemona turns her back on them, and Leo hesitantly lowers his gun, but doesn’t put it away.

Following the loosely given instructions, Ren hops down and heads over to Deacon, who’s happily smoking away. Leo’s slower about moving, but can hear Deacon speaking clearly in the empty echoing chamber of the room.

“Hope you didn't mind the reception,” he says by way of apology. “When you tango with the Institute you got to be careful when someone new gets on the dance floor.”

Leo can hear the smile in his wife’s voice. She shifts, looking more relaxed. “Your leader was just being cautious.”

Oh no. She better not start flirting. Leo is _not_ even going to _pretend_ to entertain the thought of a threesome with this guy. The punk girl, maybe, but not this guy.

~~~

Though she does flirt, nothing much comes of it. They end up trailing back to meet Deacon all the way at a bridge on the outskirts of Lexington, the sun beginning to dip from its perch at the top of the sky. There’s still a few hours until dark, but it’s looking like they aren’t getting back to Goodneighbor tonight. Possibly not even tomorrow.

No one would divulge many details about anything, and Leo was about ready to tell Deacon that he could go fuck himself and do whatever the fucking job is on his own. But Ren sweet talked the guy, got him to admit that the two of them seem capable, and that they’d be terrifying enemies but valuable allies. Also that the Railroad needs them. Bad. Leo admittedly has an ego, a rather large one in fact, and it soothes his cold little soul to know that these people probably don’t like him, and yet they _still_ have to rely on him.

So they meet up with Deacon and go through a quick training session. They learn the ‘rail signs’ along the way, and the two recognize the ‘unsafe’ sign from various places. Ren had wondered what it had meant when they saw it on the outside of the Super Duper Mart during a supply run, and had pretty quickly learned when they were swarmed by ghouls. The big fat ‘X’ means bad.

They’re also taught some ‘counter signs’, namely the phrases “Do you have a Geiger counter?” and “Mine is in the shop”. Deacon blathers about how he wanted a secret handshake but that it never caught on, and Ren snickers. Leo remains unamused. Deacon is charismatic, yes, but in just such a way that it grates on Leo’s fucking nerves.

The info they’re given by another ‘tourist’- Ricky- tells them that there’s synths crawling all over the Railroad’s old base. Looking down her sniper rifle’s scope, Ren confirms this. There’s synths all over the place, patrolling the outside of the Slocum’s Joe, and she’s sure she can see a machine gun turret through one of the broken windows. Looking harder, there’s mines all over the goddamn place. Well over two dozen at the least.

“Frontal assault is a no-go,” Ren says, interrupting the conversation going on between the three men. “Too many mines, for one. I could take some of it out from here, but it might draw the synths’ attention.” But still, she gets down on her belly on the edge of the crumbling overpass and debates on whether or not she should take out a few of the mines out front.

“So we’re taking the back entrance?” Deacon asks, peering down to the ruined storefront.

“Not without buying me dinner first,” she mumbles back, and Leo can’t hold back a snort. Like hell. They’ve been married for five years now, and it’s still a cold day in Hell when she lets _him_ -

“We should get moving,” Leo instructs. “It’s going to get dark soon enough and I don’t like traversing this hellscape at night.”

_____

A poorly hidden sewer tunnel is their entrance, it seems. Deacon holds the brush aside and lets the two of them in, quietly giving a little more information once they’re inside. As they creep along the damp, musty tunnel, Deacon tells them that they’re looking for a prototype of some kind for their doctor. He has no idea what it is, says he and the other agents are being kept in the dark about it, but that Dez wouldn’t be risking them if it wasn’t important.

“First step is to override the security lockdown,” Deacon murmurs as he steps out of the tunnel, taking the lead. He looks around, keeping an eye on the open path leading to a locked door.

Leo can hear something a ways away, but can’t quite make out what it is. It has the faint chattering sound that Gen-1’s have and since the place was overrun by the Institute, he would bet money that he’s hearing synths. He motions for Deacon to carry on moves to guard the door. Ren follows Deacon, mostly just to see what he’s doing.

He fiddles with a terminal mounted on the wall, his scowling face reflected back in the black monitor. Pressing the power button, nothing happens. He exhales and tries again, but still nothing. The third time, he holds it down for a few seconds, and it finally flickers on. The monitor lights up green and begins cycling through the boot up sequence, and he lets out a breath of relief.

“Terminal still works,” Deacon says, more to himself than anything. Then, to them, “Gonna feed it some passwords.”

On his fourth try, the door swings open. A good thing, because he’d rather not be locked out of it for five minutes. “Prototype is deeper inside,” he tells them, brushing past Leo to take the lead.

Leo notices the smell just before either of them do. It’s just the faintest hint, but he knows what a dead person smells like and it smells like a _lot_ of dead people in here. Further down the hall, Deacon points out another sign on the wall.

“Someone left a railsign here. This one means danger.” He lets out a breath, tinged with false humor. “Yeah, we know, you poor dead bastard, we know.”

_____

Deacon seems horrified yet impressed when he watches the two of them work. Even with all those muscles, Leo’s still deceptively strong. Gen-1’s aren’t heavy, but they’re not exactly light either. So Deacon watches with fascination, observing this big brute of a man ripping synths apart with his bare hands and tossing them around like they’re nothing.

Ren can do much the same. With her, he can’t tell if it’s adrenaline or just raw strength. She’s also really good at keeping Deacon distracted. She talks in a quiet whisper, keeping his attention trained on her while they pass the corpses of people he’s called his friends, his family. She’s good at being a chatterbox, and she’s pretty perceptive too. Good. She’ll fit in pretty well with their crew. Despite Dez’s opinion, Deacon thinks Leo will fit in too, so long as he sticks by his lady’s side. She’s got the conscience between the two of them.

While Ren is busy keeping Deacon distracted, her partner lags behind and Deacon figures Leo’s picking the pockets of the other agents. Deacon wants to say it’s disrespectful, but the supplies aren’t going to do his dead compatriots any good. But he still turns at some point, only to see the man closing their rotted eyes and moving on. Alright, maybe he’s got some semblance of conscience too.

His main job here is to watch how they work up close. Get the prototype too, of course, but his other primary objective is to observe. Deacon has watched Leo and Ren plenty of times since they emerged from their Vault, he’s seen how they work and how damn good of a job they do. But he’s supposed to watch them up close now, keep tabs on exactly how they fight, what they say, how they plan, and all of that other great shit.

They mostly communicate through grunts, gestures, and facial expressions. Deacon can’t decipher most of them. A nudge here, a raised brow there. When he suggests that they activate the defenses up ahead, he watches Ren nuzzle her head against her husband’s shoulder, and that’s it. Leo’s moving to the terminal to turn everything on.

He once read about something. It was a childhood development book for parents with multiples. One section talked all about cryptophasia, the ‘secret language of twins’. It described a language developed by twins in early their childhood. Something they only speak with each other.Deacon wonders if these two have their own form of cryptophasia.

“Prepare to be shocked: not every Slocum's Joe has a massive tunnel complex underneath it,” Deacon tells them once they’ve cleared out the main atrium. “We're entering a secret Defense Intelligence Agency research lab. A place that never officially existed. It's called The Switchboard.” He takes just a moment to look around at the destroyed synth skeletons and more bodies of his friends.”The DIA eggheads spent their precious brain cells here trying to outwit the Red Menace.”

“Wrap it up,” Leo says curtly, head tilted to the side. “I hear more synths.”

He nods. Understandable. “The prototype is locked up in the heart of the facility.”

Leo is very… thorough. They pass by the doors to the vault several times, even stepping in to clear out the synths. But he shakes his head when Deacon starts to go to the door. Motions for him to follow the way they just came.

“I still hear them,” Leo says, and up ahead in a different hallway, they can hear Ren begin shooting. “It’s not safe.”

So, he follows their lead and clears the whole damn place out first. It makes sense, he guesses. If they all die here for some reason, the prototype will still be locked up safe and tight instead of in Deacon’s bag. Going room by room means he has to see _everyone_ though. It gives him some kind of peace, knowing they they’re dead and not just lost. Johnny, goddamn Johnny helped save their asses by burning all their sensitive documents and killing himself in the process.

After three solid sweeps to ensure the entire building is secure, Leo finally deems that it’s safe enough to get into the vault. Deacon’s grateful. The smell of death and burning plastic is making him want to fucking puke.

He gets in, finally close enough to see that the vault door is closed and locked up tight. A sigh of relief escapes him. “Thank god, someone managed to close the security door in time. Carrington's prototype is in there.” He fumbles through his pocket and produces a holotape that Carrington gave him, holding it up by the terminal. “Where's that play button...”

“ _Carrington. Stanley. Salus aegroti suprema lex,_ ” the voice crackles out.

“Open says me,” Deacon mutters, listening to the locks in the wall beginning to disengage.

Ren and Leo, who have been lingering near the door, step back when it slowly swings open, unsure of what waits within. A fresh wave of rotting corpse smell washes over all three, and Ren fights not to puke as they all take another giant step back.

“It’s better than nothing,” Deacon hears Leo say, and turns to find him handing a bloodstained cloth to his wife. She ties it around her face like a bandana, still looking pretty green. Declines to join them when they motion inward. Undeterred, the two men take a deep breath of slightly cleaner air before stepping inside.

Deacon examines the room, his eyes going first to the body on the floor. There’s all kinds of rubble on the floor, several shelves overturned. He steps over the shelving and kneels down, ignoring the blood and gore splatter on the wall and the blatant way that the corpse is missing the top of its head. No doubt why he shot himself. Would have either suffocated or died of thirst in here.

It’s Tommy. No doubt. He’d recognize that outfit anywhere, the bastard loved that coat more than he loved himself. The Deliverer is still clenched in his grip, and Deacon swallows as he struggles to unload it before wrestling it out of Tommy’s bloated grip.

“So Tommy Whispers didn't make it out. He died protecting our secrets,” he mutters, more to himself than anything. Leo says nothing, letting him have his moment.

Deacon reloads the Deliverer, the clip full minus one bullet. He can’t hold on to this thing. It’ll break Glory’s heart to see it, he already knows. He thinks back to earlier in the day, with Leo staring blankly at Dez, silent, with nothing but an unmodified silenced 10mm from Arturo’s shop against Drummer Boy’s pistol and Glory’s minigun. Brave and bold. Protecting what he loves.

“Here,” he says, speaking before he’s fully thought about what to say. “Tommy would want you to have his handcannon. Don't let its size fool you.” He turns to Leo, holding the Deliverer out by its barrel.

Leo takes it, looks it over for a long moment. Even holds it up to the light for some reason. But he gives it a good, long look before taking the silenced 10mm from his hip and putting the Deliverer in its place. “I appreciate it.”

“May it serve you as well, heck, better than it did Tommy.” He takes the hand that’s offered out to him and gets to his feet. There’s blood on his own hand from Leo’s split palms, sliced from ripping synths apart. Deacon discretely wipes it off. Alright. He nods at an upright section of shelving that houses a few stealth boys and a really fucked up hunk of metal with a tiny satellite on it. “Grab Carrington's prototype. You turn that over to Desdemona and she'll have to let you two into our merry band.”

“You care if I take these hazmat suits?” Ren calls from outside of the vault. He can’t see her from here, but he doesn’t need to.

“They’re not doing any good locked down here,” he answers back, and when he’s met with silence, he clarifies, “Yes. Take ‘em.”

Leo secures the prototype in his bag, ensuring it’s settled in such a way that it can’t fall and damage itself. Deacon watches him take care with it. Yeah, Leo’s good material. Just as good as his girl, just in other ways.

“Okay,” Deacon says once he and Leo have emerged, watching Ren try to shove the suits down into the bottom of her pack. “There's an elevator at the end of the hall. It should be a hell of a lot easier fighting the chrome-domes on this side of the minefield.”

_____  
“This has been an… interesting day,” Ren says, stopping outside of the ‘back entrance’ of the church. She takes off her boots and pours the water out, scowling as a mix of foot smell and stagnant water hits her nose. Fuck. It’s nighttime, her boots aren’t going to be dry by the time they’re up in the morning.

“ _Grief_ ,” she tacks on, feeling the frown be replaced with something mischievous.

Leo rolls his eyes, doing much the same with his own boots. “Like _Renegade_ is a better code name. Now. Do you have that out of your system? Was that enough of a break?” Leaning to tie his laces back, he continues. “Or do I need to go clear out a hotel so you can relax on the coast for a week?”

“Don’t temp me.”

“There’s no temptations there. I wouldn’t actually do it.” He takes his hair down and redoes his bun, watching her fight against her wet laces.

Once her shoes are tied, she lets him help her up. “But yeah, I’m done. We can go to Goodneighbor now.”

He nods, and careful not to knock their Pip-Boys together, takes her hand.


	20. Memory Den

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning that this is kind all around graphic. Some violence, death, vague descriptions of bodies, non-descriptive vomiting. Also, this is one of the longest chapters to date. I didn't intend for it to get so long, but cutting it in half at any point just made it feel weird. It's just under 6k. So, enjoy!

The Rexford isn’t too bad, by way of habitation in the Wasteland. The bed is big enough for the two of them to be able to sprawl out, which Leo likes. They’re both bed hogs in their own way, and a double bed is really nice to spend the night in. Room to sleep, not having to deal with Renee bitching that she’s falling off the edge. Plus, it cost them ten caps. It’s way nicer than the Dugout, not that he’ll ever tell that to Yefim or Vadim, and yet it cost the same thing. He likes that.

Unfortunately, they’re required to get up earlier than what either of them would like. Ren sort of looks like she wants to cry after she turns her alarm off. They’ve only gotten around five hours of sleep after yesterday’s excitement, and she’s gotten accustomed to her full eight hours. And just like she’d thought, her boots are still wet.

“Don’t fret,” Leo says quietly, picking his bag up off of the floor. “Open the working window and set your boots out to dry. We still need to eat something before we go.”

He pulls something square out of his bag and unwraps the cloth around it, setting a functional looking hotplate on the desk across from the bed. Ren nods and takes her boots off, tossing her socks on the bed so those can dry too. While he digs through the food out his his pack, she sets his boots up on the window sill to dry with her own. It’s only polite.

“Check on the brain,” he instructs, pulling his shirt on. Probably didn’t find anything good in his rations. “I’m going to see if the general store has anything edible.”

“Get whatever you want, I’m not picky today.” She looks around for her own shirt, wondering if he accidentally kicked it under the bed or something.

“For once,” he teases, but leaves without a fuss.

The brain bit is still weirdly intact. Not a bit of damage to it, though it stinks to high hell. The metal from Kellogg's arm is already beginning to rust, and she’s certain that something is starting to leak out of the pain inhibitor. But the brain is just fine.

While she awaits his return, she sets about checking their guns. She’s pretty sure he cleaned them a few days before they left Diamond City, but she’s not entirely sure. But she can make sure they’re all fully loaded, including the silenced gun that Deacon gave Leo yesterday. It’s a nice gun, for sure. Now that he’s got this thing, they can probably sell the old one back to Arturo in exchange for shotgun shells. She’s running low on those. Maybe if Goodneighbor has a weapons dealer, they can sell it there? Ren isn’t entirely sure if they have one. Most everything was closed when they stumbled in, and she wasn’t paying very much attention in the first place.

Leo comes back after a bit with some mirelurk wrapped in newspaper and a frying pan. “Store owner said I could borrow it as long as I washed it before bringing it back,” he explains, and he takes the initiative to cook for once.

Once they’ve finished up everything left that they can use as a delay, they find themselves standing outside of the Memory Den. Neither are too familiar with this part of Boston, and neither can recall what the hell this place was pre-war. Like everything else they’ve seen in Goodneighbor, the sign is big and flashy. Catches the eye. The pre-war sign has too many letters missing to be readable though.

“Think Nick is here yet?” Ren asks, watching the lights on the sign blink in and out.

Leo rolls his shoulders into a shrug, then reaches for the door. “Only one way to find out.”

“Well, well. Mister Valentine,” they hear a voice say before the door is even closed behind them.” I thought you had forgotten about little ole' me.”

“May have walked out of the Den, Irma, but I'd never walk out on you,” Nick teases, and they catch sight of him as they round the corner. Damn, he just _barely_ beat them here.

The woman he’s talking to, Irma, glances to them but doesn’t pay much mind. She’s pretty in a classic kind of way, though the stringy feathered dress is kind of tacky. But the fainting couch is pretty sweet. Irma brushes a neatly styled curl away from her eye and smiles faintly at the detective.

“Hmph. Amari's downstairs, you big flirt.”

Catching her glance away, Nick looks over his shoulder. He gives the two of them a nod and waves for them to follow. Not bothering to ask about their day of absence, he merely instructs, “Come on.”

Ren’s gaze lingers around, unsure of what she’s looking at. They’re… pods of some sort? And there’s folks laying down in them, eyes glazed over as they stare up at screens playing something indecipherable. Leo had heard a member of the ‘Neighborhood Watch’ mention something about the ‘memory pods’ to a buddy of his, so he figures that’s what those are. He leans over and murmurs what he thinks they are into Ren’s ear, hoping to alleviate her confusion.

Irma has nothing to say to the two as they pass, but gives them a small nod of acknowledgment. To the right, just before the stairs begin, there’s a long line of vanity desks with accompanying mirrors, seemingly frozen in time. Maybe this place was a theater of sorts? Maybe a fancy strip club? Either way, there’s makeup left neatly on the vanity closest to them, and Ren is willing to bet that it’s Irma’s.

“Sort of a, ah, well it’s not a social call,” they hear Nick say as they reach the bottom of the stairs.

Rounding into the room, they find two more of those weird memory pods with some kind of strange terminal against the wall. Nick’s standing with a woman, presumably Amari, and she doesn’t look happy in the slightest.

“Are these the friends?” Amari asks, looking over the couple in the doorway. “What exactly is it that the three of you need?”

“I’m Ren, this is my husband Leo,” Ren explains, but immediately gets to the point. No need to beat around the bush. “You're the one that can extract memories from a brain, right?” she asks, watching the woman’s dark brows come together.

She narrows her eyes after a moment, and her tone is suspicious. “Normally we only allow our clients to experience their own memories.” Amari glances between the two and Nick. “Now what's this all about?”

Nick clears his throat, drawing the doctor’s attention back to him. “We need a deep dig, Amari, but it's not gonna be easy. The perp, Kellogg, is already cold on the floor.”

Amari blinks once, hard. Then, she looks between the three of them with absolute fury. “Are you all _mad_!?” she demands. “Putting aside the fact that you're asking me to defile a corpse, you do realize that the memory simulators require intact, _LIVING_ brains to function?”

“Nick told us you're the only one who could make this work.” Ren uses a small, lost voice, hoping to garner some sympathy.

Amari gives Ren a look when she speaks. It’s not a nice look. She’s certainly got a lot to say in return, that much is obvious, but Nick starts talking before the doctor can.

“This dead brain had inside knowledge of the Institute, Amari. The biggest scientific secret of the Commonwealth. You need this, and so do we.”

There’s a long moment of silence. The floor above them creaks and settles, and finally, she sighs. She still doesn’t look happy. “Fine. I'll take a look, but no guarantees.” Making a face, she asks, “Do you... have it with you?”

Ren nods a little too enthusiastically. She pulls her pack off and sets it on the table closest to the door, taking care as she pulls the first-aid kit out. The parts rattle within, and she debates on taking the brain piece itself out. Ren glances to Leo, who merely shrugs.

“Hand it over,” he tells his wife, noting the way the doctor flinches in surprise. She hasn’t heard him speak until now.

Nodding, Ren turns and crosses the room, offering the kit to the other woman. “Here's... what we could find. Beware when you open it, it fucking _stinks_.”

Amari’s nose curls when she pops the lid open, but is otherwise unbothered. Her eyes scan over the contents of the box before settling on the brain chunk sitting in the middle. Pulling it out, she holds it up to the light. Confusion pulls at her brows. “What's this? This isn't a brain! This is...wait...” She narrows her eyes, pulling it a bit closer. Her eyes go wide. “That's the hippocampus! And this thing attached to it. A neural interface?”

Leaning in, Nick gets another look. “Those circuits look awfully familiar…” he mutters.

“I'm not surprised.” Amari lowers it and gives Nick a look. “From what I've seen, all Institute technology has a similar architecture.” She turns her gaze to the couple, glancing between them once more. “Mister Valentine is an older generation synth. But, Institute technology being what it is... The brain implant could fit him,” Amari explains, though she looks less than pleased with the prospect. “But that's... an incredible risk to take. We're talking about wiring something to his brain.”

Waving a hand, Nick tells her, “Don't worry about me, Amari. I'm well past the warranty date, anyway.”

“You really think this will work, Nick?” Ren asks him, knowing better than to ask him to reconsider. The synth is stubborn. _Caring_. He’s going to do it even if Ren begs him not to. And it’s not like she doesn’t want to find Shaun, they’ve already come this far, but she doesn’t want it to be at the cost of Valentine’s brain possibly getting destroyed.

“No idea,” Nick admits, “but we got a missing kid on the line. That's worth the risk.”

Amari takes her time setting him up, being careful not to further damage his already sparse skin. She talks to him while she does, shooting Ren and Leo glances to encourage them to do much the same. Neither can tell if it’s for the sake of Nick’s nerves or her own.

Leo looks around while they’re busy, arms crossed over his chest. He doesn’t like the way this room smells. Like burnt wiring and something sharply antiseptic. Like a mechanic's shop combined with a hospital room. It’s set up very clinically, for some kind of specific purpose, but he can’t place what. Either way, he doesn’t like it.

He lets Ren and Nick dictate the conversation, but he tosses something in here and there. Ren’s better at being the chatterbox and keeping the synth distracted. Still, the time comes for her to connect the brain chunk to Nick.

Amari is delicate about it, but Nick still jolts in place. He blinks those large yellow eyes in something reminiscent of a surprised reaction to pain, something undeniably human. She holds the piece still while Nick’s face scrunches up in obvious discomfort.

“Are you... feeling any different?” Amari asks, unable to see his face.

His claw-like hand digs into the arm of the chair he’s in, scraping chunks out of the wood. He’s in pain, trying and failing to hide it. “There's a lot of... flashes... static...” Nick bites out, tying to keep still. The color in his eyes flickers, going dim for a moment before lighting back up. “I can't make sense of any of it, doc.”

The doctor sighs. “That's what I was afraid of. The mnemonic impressions are encoded. It appears the Institute has one last failsafe.” She rests a hand on Nicks shoulder “There's a lock on the memories in the implant.”

Leo doesn’t sigh, but he sure wants to. Wonderful. He rubs a hand over his face and glances at his wife, who seems genuinely upset. At the prospect of their kid being so close yet so far, or the fact that Nick is causing himself pain on their behalf, he isn’t sure which. He catches Amari’s attention.

“Is there any way past this?” he asks, watching Nick close his eyes in an attempt to relax. “Anything at all that you could think of?”

Amari looks away, seemingly thinking. “The encryption is too strong for a single mind. But... what if we used two?” Her eyes light up. “We load one of you and Mister Valentine into the memory loungers. Run your cognitive functions in parallel. He'll act as a host while your consciousness drives through whatever memories we can find.”

He gives Ren a look, then refocuses on the doctor. “Alright. I’ll give it a shot.”

Ren’s Pip-Boy loudly knocks into his own almost immediately as she grabs at his hand. She wants to argue, he can tell. But there’s likely no other way and she knows it. So she holds onto his hand for a long moment while Amari turns her back, then tells him that she loves him. They’ve broken their kiss by the time Amari faces him once more.

“Just sit down over there,” she instructs, pointing him to one of the pods. “And... keep your fingers crossed.”

~~~

He idly flips through the Grognak comic that he’s read a thousand times, paying more attention to the radio. Mom has her chair pulled up to the bed tonight. She’s sitting close to the radio too, to keep the volume down so that Dad doesn’t get angry. Dad is in a particularly nasty mood tonight. Still, Dad yells from somewhere else in the house to turn it off, he’s trying to sleep!

“ _And that makes it official folks, the final vote count from the Hub is in: 55% in favor of joining the New California Republic_ ,” the voice crackles from the radio. He can’t remember the DJ’s name, but he knows the guy has been really excited about the prospect of this happening. “ _All five states have now signed on, which means that as of this moment, we are all citizens of the New California Republic. I'm sure that's going to take some getting used to for a lot of people_.”

Mom scoffs and basically tells him that it’s all just a crock of shit, then threatens to pull him out of school when she hears that the teacher has told them that the NCR would restore the place like it was in the good old days. Shakes her head and look frustrated. In this poor lighting from his single lamp, he almost can’t see where she’s used makeup to cover the black eye that Dad gave her two nights ago.

Almost on cue, Dad storms around in the living room. He shouts that he’s going out, then something hits the wall and Dad demands to know where his boots are. Both presume the man found them, because the front door slams shortly after.

“Listen to me, Connie,” Mom says, and for some reason, it doesn’t feel right. “You take this. You're old enough.”

She gives him her gun, something nice that she undoubtedly had to spend a lot of money on. Mom tells him that he’s the man of the house now, that he’s the protector. His father is useless. Mom tells him that he’s a good boy though, that he won’t turn out like his father. Still, something nags in the back of his mind as he look back at his mother.

He… he doesn’t have a father. Or a mother. The last memory he has of his mom, he was probably three. Her skin was several shades darker than his own, but she had the same jet black hair and the same brown eyes. And his name… It’s not… He’s not Connie. He’s Léonce.

Still, Mom strokes the back of his head, her fingers stroking through the short buzzed haircut. She’s so pale in this light, her bottom lip still healing from a week ago. She tells him that the only thing in the world that’s going to protect him is the gun in his hands, and that he needs to learn how to use it to survive. He looks down the sights and finds himself promising her that he won’t let her down, though he knows that in just three short years, he’s going to run away and never see her again.

“You've always been my good boy,” she tells him, and the front door slams back open.

He blinks, and he’s standing in the kitchen of their tiny apartment with Sarah. Looking down, he sees that he’s nicked himself while cutting up brahmin for dinner. It’s not bleeding or anything, so he goes back to cubing the meat. Sarah glances over at the pile of excess fat on the corner chopping board. He meets her eyes and she looks away, going back to the dishes.

“It's going to be fine. You'll see,” he assures his wife, smiling to himself. She’s always so worried now days.

Sarah shakes her head. She argues that they don’t know anyone here, mentions the baby. Once more, he assures her that he has steady work here, and when she tries to debate the quality of his co-workers, if you could call them that, he stops her. It’s only for a while, he tells her. Just until he can make the connections that he needs. He’ll be running his own crew five years from now, she’ll see. He can provide for her, for Mary too. Glancing across the room, he sees the baby is still sleeping in her crib. Setting the knife down, he draws the .44. He tells Sarah that this is going to protect them.

“I know, Connie,” Sarah says, sitting herself at the table. She still looks worried, but she’s got a small smile now. He feels like something’s off again. “I'm sure we're going to be really happy here.”

He’s… Yeah, right, he’s Léonce. And his wife isn’t Sarah. He struggles for a moment, but her name finally comes to him. His wife is Camilla. She’s little and blonde and fierce, just like Sarah. Something still feels wrong, and he focuses hard. He… he does have a baby. A son, not a daughter. But not with Camilla? Camilla hates children, why would they… Another name comes to him. Renee. He’s married to Renee, of _course_. Camilla has been dead for thirteen some-odd years. He’s married to his bold, brash, hot piece of ass wife Renee, and they have a boy together.

From her crib, Mary begins to cry. Sarah sighs and starts to get up, but he shakes his head and lightly pushes at her shoulder. Tells her to sit back down. He’s got it. But when he reaches Mary’s crib, his hands go right through her. Something like fear grips his chest. What the fuck? Why can’t he pick up his daughter?

He blinks, and he’s _angry_. He feels like he’s going to vomit, he wants to cry and scream and shoot himself in the fucking head. He can’t get the image out of his skull, the sight of Sarah and Mary, his wife and little girl soaked in their own gore, strewn across the apartment in _pieces_ -

“How did you think this was gonna end, Kellogg?” a voice asks over the intercom, almost mockingly. He storms down the hall, his eyes burning with the force of his anger, his anguish. The voice has the audacity to laugh at him. “You thought you could just fuck with us, and we wouldn't fuck with _you_?”

He can’t contain his snarl as he closes in on the door. He doesn’t care if he comes out of this alive, so long as they’re all dead by the end.

“Just so you know- they _died like dogs_. And you weren’t there to help them.” And the fuck holds back another laugh

His blood boils, and with one last check of his gun, he kicks the door in. He shoots at whatever moves, uncaring of what it is. He shoots and shoots with reckless abandon, taking damage and not paying any mind to the bullets hitting him, some bouncing off his armor, a few going straight through. There’s so much blood, and it gets all over him.

Reaching up in an empty room, he wipes the blood from his eyes and finds himself in a bar, suddenly much calmer. The bartender knows better than to pay him any mind and cleans the bar top, the glasses, anything so that they don’t look at each other. A few potential customers come in, hesitant, but like always, they still sit.

The two men ask if he can take care of their problem and he agrees. So long as they pay him, that is. They agree that they can pay, tell him they’ll pay him after the job is done. It suits him just fine. If they skip out, he already knows their faces. He’ll just kill them in return and take their shit. He’s already made an example out of a couple of folks, what’s two more?

He’s been doing this for a while now. He’s somewhere in the Midwest, settling in whatever town will take him. There’s a lot of raider activity out here, lots of slavers. Lots of crime in general. He thinks in some twisted way he’s making this place better by getting rid of some of the scum. It’s better to get rid of the innocent ones too, lest they continue to suffer at the hands of these all sick fucks.

The rest of his glass is downed before he asks them who they want dead and how. There’s a family, one explains. They live down the creek. There’s some kind of feud that’s been going on for years that he doesn’t fucking care about, and these two are sick of that family. They want the kids killed first, nothing too messy or painful, but they want the parents to suffer a whole lot. He closes his eyes as he listens.

He opens his eyes and the lights are too bright, but he doesn’t let that distract him. The woman in front of him is pretty but uppity, and calls him ‘Mr. Kellogg’. It feels wrong for him to be called that, but he can’t place why. The Institute woman is clean, too, clean in a way that you just don’t get out here. The synths are mostly spotless, if a little rugged from wear and tear. Still, he regards everything with genuine interest. He’s been curious about the Institute, and tells the lady as much. She gave her name, but he can’t remember.

She confirms that yes, they do exist. Looking at her dead on, he asks what she wants. Everyone wants something from him. Institute lady, in much prettier words, says that he’s been fucking up a lot of their operations lately and he needs to cut the shit. He shrugs at her, tells her plainly that he only does what he’s paid to do. If they want it to stop, there’s one big solution that he can see. After a little more forced conversation, she sics the synths on him.

It’s easy enough to subdue them. They’re rickety and not very well coordinated, and they don’t fire very quickly. Their reflexes are nothing compared to him. Once the last one is done, he points the gun at her head. She’s been sitting there the whole time, just observing, not running like any smart person would. In fact, she looks at the gun aimed between her eyes and smiles.

“Impressive. We may have something to talk about after all.”

He rubs his eyes to take off the edge of the fluorescent lights off, and opens back to even more oppressive lighting. This Vault is pretty fucked up, if you ask him. But no one’s asking, so he doesn’t say anything. He’s here to do his job, not argue the semantics of pre-war fuckery.

All they have to do is get the baby. But the father doesn’t wanna let go, and he can’t blame the guy. He feels some kind of spark, some recognition to the guy’s face. Maybe he reminds him of a tribal man he befriended as a child. Prettier and cleaner maybe. Younger. Still, he can’t place why he seems familiar. But the guy snarls at the woman in scrubs that he’s supposed to be protecting, and spits ‘fuck you’ when they demand he hand the baby over. Behind them in a different pod, his wife shouts out him in a high panic to just give them the baby.

He shoots, they take the baby. The guy isn’t dead but he’s bleeding freely and will definitely be that way soon. Or, at least, after he’s unfrozen. Whenever that is. It’s regrettable to have to shoot the guy. He faces the wife, mentions to the lady in scrubs that the gal will make a good backup. She’s pretty enough, even with the look of horror and the tears running down her face. He feels like it’s a mistake not to just kill the two of them and be over with it. He’s not one to leave loose ends. But it’s not his call, so he groups up with the egghead scientists. And then they leave, simple as that. The flash that temporarily blinds him.

When his eyes clear, he focuses in on his gun. He’s been drowning out Travis’ horrid reporting by zoning out and cleaning the damn thing. Frankly, if he killed the guy, he’d be doing Diamond City a favor. But Shaun like the music, so he lets it stay on. The kid is flipping through a fairly impressive collection of comic books and coloring pages, hunched over them in an almost protective way. He’s not supposed to let the kid sit like that and fuck up his posture, but what the old man doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Not like the kid is going to remember anyway.

The kid’s hair is starting to get long, he’s noticed. It’s straight as a pin when it’s cropped short, but the moment it grows, it waves out. It has proper curls if it gets past his ears, but the kid doesn’t like it curly so they get it cut long before that point. He wonders what they’re going to ear for dinner tonight. The kid isn’t fond of noodles, but he’ll eat a whole box of Fancy Lads if you let him. He’s let him, once or twice. He isn’t always the bad cop.

Travis rattles on and on about some article that the newsgirl Piper put out, accusing the mayor of being a synth. She isn’t wrong. And the Courser that they keep sending to meet up with him has been cited, so he needs to mention that to the old man if someone else doesn’t first. This will ruin all sorts of plans and he doesn’t feel like cleaning up a mess that big because these fucks can’t be discrete.

He hears the steps outside before the door even opens, but the Courser isn’t phased when he comes in to find the gun pointed at him. The kid looks nervous, and he assures Shaun that everything’s fine. He tells the Courser flat out he’s going to get shot one day bursting in like that. Unfazed, the Courser tells him he has a new assignment and hands him a folder about three inches thick.

Skimming, he gets a small amount of info. Huh, interesting. Bioscience, working on a highly classified project the Courser explains. A man by the name of Brian Virgil. Went rogue and abandoned the Institute, now hiding out somewhere in the Glowing Sea, but there’s no specific information as to _exactly_ where he is. His job is to neutralize the threat. No retrieval. Just kill him. This new assignment is effective immediately.

“So… I guess you’re taking the kid back with you.”

The Courser gives a curt nod and motions for the kid to get up. “Affirmative. Your only mission is to locate and eliminate Virgil.”

Shaun looks happy enough as he stands next to the Courser. His coloring pages and comics are still all over the floor, his 200 year old crayons strewn around the mess. “Bye Mr. Kellogg!” the kid says cheerfully, giving him a wave as the Courser instructs him to stand closer. “I hope I’ll see you again sometime!”

There’s a blinding, brilliant flash, and the two are gone.

“Bye,” he says to the empty air, and looks at his reflection in the dead television. It turns on in yet another bright flash, and he closes his eyes.

~~~

“How are you feeling? Are you alright?” he hears Amari ask as the pod disengages, opening back up. His eyes open, and his stomach rolls.

“Trashcan,” he bites out, and Renee’s quick about bringing him the one from across the room.

Leo falls out onto his knees and grip the sides of it, emptying his breakfast into the metal bin. His head doesn’t feel right. Now that he’s out, he can recall hearing Amari talk to him throughout, guiding him along, can remember her little bits of commentary. Teleportation. That how they get in and out. But he’s still stuck on Kellogg's memories.

His mother. His wife and little girl. Leo’s not one to be queasy about that sort of thing, but when he thinks about his- _Kellogg’s_ family torn limb from limb and scattered across their home, more bile comes up.

Ren soothes a hand across his back, resting her forehead on his shoulder. She’s trembling, but he thinks it’s probably because puke is something she can’t handle. If he keeps this up much longer, he’s going to have to move over so they can share the puke can.

When he’s able to keep his stomach from emptying itself again, he talks with Amari. From a medical standpoint, he’s still perfectly healthy. There’s the unspoken suggestion that he may not be quite mentally sound from this experience, but frankly he wasn’t mentally sound to begin with. She asks how he feels about Kellogg now, knowing what he knows, but doesn’t push when Leo doesn’t say anything. Mostly, she rehashes the details with them. Teleportation seems to be the only way in and out, and the only person that they could feasibly ask about it is Dr. Brian Virgil, who’s somewhere in the Glowing Sea. If he’s even still alive out there.

The Glowing Sea. They know enough about it. Radiation galore, where the nuke dropped. One of the nukes. The lucky one that they witnessed before the Vault’s elevator could take them down all the way. It’s irradiated to high hell, and Amari thinks it’s a bad fucking idea to go there. But with little other choice, she wishes the two of them good luck in their search.

“By the way, I unplugged Mister Valentine first,” she calls as he and Ren are exiting the room. “Removed the implant while you were waking up. He's waiting for you upstairs.”

“You okay?” Ren asks quietly once they’re in the hallway, away from any prying eyes. “I watched everything on her terminal, so I saw… everything.”

Just the mention of it makes his stomach begin to protest. When he doesn’t answer her, she wraps her arms around him and holds him in a long embrace. They both need it. Maybe when this is over, they’ll have someone watch Shaun. She’ll give Leo that nice wine date that she suggested, though it feels like years ago that she offered. They’ll clear out a hotel or apartment with a view, get wine drunk, and fuck on every piece of furniture. It’ll be nice.

They break apart after he’s had his fill of comfort and seek out Nick. He’s waiting by the entry arch, and Ren lets Leo approach first, though she stays close behind.

“Are you well, Nick?” Leo asks, wondering if Nick got to watch it all too.

“Hope you got what you were looking for inside my head,” Nick says, but his voice rough and washed out. It’s not his voice, in fact, He sounds exactly like Kellogg. On instinct, Leo’s hand goes to his knife, but the synth stays seated with his hands folded in his lap. “Heh. I was right. Should've killed you both when you were on ice.”

Leo stares at him for a good long time while Nick- Kellogg?- looks between him and Ren. “Nothing to say?” Kellogg teases.

Leo has plenty to say. He’s just witnessed some of the most important parts of Kellogg’s life, experienced them in what else like first hand. Ren’s hand snakes into his own, and he looks deep into those yellow eyes that the merc is hiding behind.

“I don’t think I blame you anymore,” Leo says, finally. He doesn’t blame the man for the way he is, _was_ , now that he’s seen the kind of life that led up to this grizzled, hardened mercenary.

Nick’s brows come together after a moment. “What? What are you talking about?” he asks, sounding utterly confused.

“You sounded like Kellogg,” Ren tells him, watching him with a wary gaze.

The synth hum to himself, taking no offense to her caution. “Did I? Amari said there might be some "mnemonic impressions" left over...” He shakes his head faintly. That seems to be the end of it.

They talk a little longer. Nick agrees to head back to Diamond City to fill Piper and Ellie in, and gives them a few suggestions about surviving out in the Glowing Sea. Their best shot is to get suits of power armor and stock up an anti-rad meds. He mentions a place to the south east, a group called the Atom Cats that could help them out with a suit if they don’t want to fight a raider for one or go hunting for one at a military installation.

“We’ll be back,” Ren tells Nick, giving him a smile. “Whether it’s before or after we go to the Glowing Sea, we’ll come back and see you guys.”

Before Nick heads out, Leo passes him a small bag of caps. Tells him that this is child support, please feed the dog nicely. Dogmeat likes molerat. Nick gets a laugh out of it and thanks him before leaving out of the Memory Den, not looking back.

“You alright?” Ren asks, watching Leo stare blankly at a wall. It’s not uncommon for him to zone out and stare at shit, but she can also kinda tell that he’s not zoned out.

“After this, _I_ need a break.”


	21. Interlude: Insurance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interludes are just things that don't really fit anywhere else but add information to the story.

There’s a ghoul dressed like a fucking founding father at the end of the alley, and Ren has to force herself not to laugh. He’s talking to some wicked looking redhead, girl has the essence of raider all over her and the minigun she has doesn’t help the intimidating demeanor. But the ghoul and woman move to opposite ends of the alley to let Ren and Leo through, and they all trade nods.

“You hungry?” Ren asks, looking over towards the shops. They were closed last night, but now she can see that there’s indeed a general store along with a weapons shop being run by… an assaultron? “I figure you might want to eat again after breakfast made a reappearance.”

“I have jerky if I want anything,” he tells her, though he could definitely go for some Fancy Lads right now. Something sweet.

“If you’re sure,” she says, and heads for the gate.

“Hey,” a voice barks at them. Looking over, a man in filthy road leathers hops down off of the brick fence in front of the general store. He looks the two of them over almost like he’s sizing them up.

Leo’s heard that Goodneighbor is a rougher sort of town. Just as well protected as the other major cities, but not as safe. This guy doesn’t look safe. He can take the guy easily, hell, Renee could too. But he doesn’t want to cause trouble here and risk getting kicked out or run off by a lynch mob.

“Ain’t seen the two of you before. Must’a come in while I was sleepin’, yeah?” the man asks, his eyes lingering uncomfortably long on Ren. “So’s I’m guessing it’s your first time here.Can't go walking around without insurance.”

“Insurance?” Ren asks incredulously, brow raised. She sounds fed up with him already. God, this better not be a pyramid scheme pitch. She thought that died when the nukes dropped. Oh no, is he going to ask her to start selling Avon, too?

“That's right. Insurance. Personal protection, like…” He trails off like he’s thinking, but smiles after a moment. It’s purely malicious. “You hand over everything you got in them pockets, or "accidents" start happenin' to the two of ya. Big, bloody, "accidents”.”

Ren can’t help herself. She laughs, right in the guy’s face. Oh fuck, it’s not a pyramid scheme after all, this guy is just a dumbass. He picked the wrong folks to try to scam. “Leo, are you going to do something about this?” she questions, looking at her husband.

“Back the fuck up or a _big, bloody accident_ is going to happen to _you_ ,” Leo tells him in a low voice, looking him dead in the eyes.

The guy regards him for a moment, and while he doesn’t outwardly show it, Leo can see the fear in his eyes. Bravado can make even the smartest man an idiot, but this man is stupid to begin with so Leo isn’t surprised when he puffs his chest up and reaches for his gun, grinning while he tells them, “You don’t scare me.”

Leo’s quicker on the draw, and has his combat knife in the man’s gut before he can even cock his gun. He’s fast about it at least. He could just leave the guy to bleed out, but stimpacks are a thing and if he’s ever allowed to return here, he doesn’t want someone with a vendetta coming after him or his wife. So after a few good stabs to the belly, he severs the guy’s jugular. Behind him, Renee sighs.

“I was hoping you’d just kick his ass,” she mutters, looking around. The founding father ghoul is making his way to them now. “I really don’t feel like getting kicked out of here. The Rexford is so nice.”

He lets go of the man’s body, knowing the guy is dead before he hits the ground. She asked him to deal with it, so he did. The founding father ghoul looks important, so he’s just waiting for the man to tell them that they’re being formally kicked out. But the ghoul grins at them and claps Leo on the shoulder.

“I like you, already! Walk into a new place, make a show of dominance. Nice.” He sounds genuinely impressed. He looks between the two of them, gives Ren a wink. “Goodneighbor's of the people, for the people, you feel me? Everyone's welcome.”

“Yeah, we got you,” Ren agrees, giving him a smile. He seems cool.

The ghoul nods. “Good. You stay cool, and you'll be part of the neighborhood. So long as you remember who's in charge.”

“And who might be in charge?” she asks. He sounded like he was threatening them, but she’s not playing those games today.

The ghoul gets something like a grin on his face. “The one and only Hancock,” he tells her, pressing a hand to his own chest in a display of ‘that’s me!’.

She can’t contain herself when she laughs once more. Even Leo lets out a sound of amusement. A ghoul dressed like a fucking founding father, named Hancock? Oh fuck, can this day get any more weird?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This doesn't add much to the story, but I really wanted him to stab Finn.


	22. Break/The Castle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mirelurks, mirelurks!
> 
> ... Oh, they're dead now. Thanks Leo.
> 
> (mirelurk death in this one)

“Where the hell are we going?” Ren asks, looking at her map. They’ve been walking for a few hours already, and they haven’t even been this far out before. Well, maybe they have before the war, but not recently. There’s been a lot of mirelurks. Had to cross through raider territory three different times now, too, and she’s not happy about how much ammo she’s wasted.

“I told you in Goodneighbor, I need a breather.”

She looks at him from the corner of his eye. “And what kind of breather are we having?”

Leo’s quiet for a moment. “Preston has been bugging me about retaking The Castle. You know, what used to be Fort Independence? The Minutemen used to operate out of there-”

“I know,” she says, cutting him off. “Please. He’s told me a thousand times, I don’t want to hear it again.”

“How do you think I feel?” he asks, but there’s a small smile on his face. “He’d mention it every time we talked. ‘General, thank you for helping this settlement’,” he mocks, taking up Preston’s tone. “’But the girls at Oberland are having trouble with birds eating their tatoes again, so we need you out there to help. Also, let’s retake The Castle. It’s the greatest asset we as the Minutemen could have. If this fort had a dick, I’d be sucking it, General’.”

She laughs, but smacks his arm. “Don’t be mean to Preston. So I’m guessing your break is going to be about as much of a break as mine was?”

“Are you referring to the part where we ran ourselves ragged despite going in with the intention to have a somewhat relaxing day?”

“...Yes?”

“Then yes.”

Frankly, he just needs to kill something.

The two take inventory of their weapons and ammunition as they go, figuring out what guns can be used the most, how many explosives they have. The Castle was taken by a monster, Preston has told them. Some kind of creature from the sea. Frankly, Leo’s going to be pissed if it’s some sort of bigger mirelurk or something that ran them off. He’s here to deal with real threats, not procure himself overly large crab claws for dinner. But he still isn’t sure what they’re up against, so they prepare themselves as best they can before arriving at the fort.

It’s… not a pretty sight. 200 years have done its fair share of damage. Several portions of different walls have collapsed in, just from what they can see from their spot in the parking lot of an old diner a little ways from the fort. A lot of overgrowth hangs off of the bastions where Leo can see some rusted heavy ordinance in shambles. The only thing nice about it is the radio tower in the center of the grounds. Ren looks through the scope of her sniper rifle, trying to survey the grounds from the parking lot.

“Can’t see much since it’s on higher ground,” she mutters, moving slow to get a good look. If she could climb up on the diner, she could get a better vantage point. “But I’m seeing lots of ‘lurks up top, maybe a few in the courtyard.”

He hums. “So we do this quiet?” Mirelurks are highly territorial, so he doubts there’s anything else alive in there.

“As usual.”

“Darling, with you, quiet is hard to achieve. Now, we need to make a plan,” he says, and motions for her to enter the diner with him. “We need to lay everything out.”

Their plan, for once, consists of more than just ‘don’t die’. There’s a real plan, Well, semi-real. They’ll deal with the mirelurks first, and if there are any hunter or kings they’ll deal with _those_ first. When they clean house, they’re going from bottom to top. Once all of the lurks are dealt with, they’re going to coax the eggs into hatching. The hatchlings will be killed, and whatever eggs don’t hatch will be taken for food. Whatever the ‘monster’ is, it will be dealt with swiftly and efficiently. If there are any hiccups, they’ll molotov their way out of it. It’s a pretty solid plan, as far as their planning goes.

“One last question.”

Leo raises a brow. “Go ahead.”

“Where exactly are we entering from?”

Oh. Yeah, that’s probably something they should figure out. First thing’s first, they scope out the outside. The front wall is collapsed in, leaving a perfect entry position. Two of the walls are completely surrounded by water, and another is partially surround with just a thin strip of land between it and the water. Big enough for them to walk on, at least, and it’s the other wall that’s in shambles. The last one has a small amount of land around it, and a long roundabout walk leads to a small bridge and set of double doors leading into the fort. Instead of walking the path, they just sort of… shimmy around the side of building. They keep their backs to the wall as they shuffle across the mushy dirt and are quiet when creeping up to the double doors.There’s a lurk waiting just inside when Leo peeks one door open, but it’s got its back to them and Leo chooses to close it up tight.

“We’ve got about three options,” he tells Ren, keeping his voice low. Won’t do to alert the lurks. “One, we can enter from here and immediately be exposed, that includes going in from this little hill of rubble. Two, we can go back and do a frontal assault from the way we came. There are a few doorways in view from these broken walls and I suspect we can dash in without drawing too much attention to ourselves.”

“What’s three?” She looks at the water around the bridge, watching wild tarberries float in the current of the water.

“Three is a new plan. We enter from the broken wall we just passed and climb the rubble. I presume there’s staircases leading up to the bastions, and if we can get to somewhere with a staircase, we can use it to our advantage.”

Once more, she questions him. It’s with a raised brow this time, but he understands.

“You can snipe,” he explains. “I can guard the stairwell. Simple.”

“But I’ll have to climb. I’m too fat to do that, Leo.”

He gives her a long, blank look before speaking. “You’re not fat, Renee. You’re proportionally built for the amount of ass and tits you have. Also, we’re not having this discussion today.” He sighs, watching her try not to smile. She makes his fucking head hurt sometimes. “Go around and start climbing.”

“I’m like thirty pounds overweight.”

“Not having this discussion.”

Ren peers over the rubble as best she can and sees nothing of note. No mirelurks in the vicinity. She starts climbing up ahead of him. “I still look like I’m like four months along, babe,”

“ _Not having this discussion, Renee_.”

He smacks her ass with the back of his hand and she yelps, but glances over her shoulder with a mischievous look. Shit, he forgot she’s into that. Teasing her probably isn’t the best course of action, but it shuts her up and gets her to climb. Though he can’t complain about the view. The ass wiggling in his face is pretty damn nice.

Once both have made it to the top, they get down low and look around. Plenty of lurks are burrowed into the dirt in the courtyard, guarding egg clutches, though one or two are idly patrolling around. The same can be said about the walkway they’re on. Egg clusters are situated like minefields, mirelurks wandering without a care in their little crabby worlds. There’s a lurk just ahead of them with its back turned, tending to some eggs. After the two have gotten a good view and taken in the clusterfuck awaiting them, Leo leans over and gets his lips close to Ren’s ear.

“Fuck.”

She brings a hand up as fast as she can to muffle her snort. None of the mirelurks turn their attention to them, thankfully. Fuck indeed. How the hell are they going to get past this?

“You have another new plan?” she asks, watching two of the lurks in the courtyard do a weird dance at the other.

“Just go straight and hope there’s a staircase. We’ll work back to the original plan of bottom to top, we just need a safe way to get to the ground floor without becoming crab food.”

It’s a challenge to get the attention of the lurk without alerting any of the others, but he does it. The Deliverer is just as quiet as Deacon advertised, and a few quick rounds into the mirelurk’s face has it down. These soft-shell varieties are so weak. To their luck, a stairwell waits for them in the bastion. Not so luckily, another mirelurk waits.

It doesn’t go down as easily. While Leo’s hurriedly trying to reload, it clamps a claw down on his right arm. He grunts in pain, not allowing himself to be any louder. Its claw makes the leather creak as it grips tighter, slowly crushing the flesh and bone underneath. Leo futilely fights against it, dodging the other claw as best he can while Ren fumbles and tries to figure out what to do.

Though not nearly as quiet as the Deliverer, the silenced 10mm stuffed into Leo’s waistband is still relatively soft when she takes it and fires. It releases his arm long enough for him to slam a new clip into it and join his wife in blasting it in the face. His arm fucking hurts, undoubtedly bruised, but he powers through it until they ensure the area is safe enough to examine it.

Ren works the guard off and rolls up his sleeve as gently as she can, being careful not to look at his face. It’s not going to help if she’s whispering ‘sorry’ every time she catches him gritting his teeth in pain. Underneath, it’s bright red and quickly turning various shades of yellow and brown. As lightly as she can, Ren runs her fingertips over the injury. Leo sucks air in through his teeth and jerks away in instinct. _Fuck_. This isn’t like the bruising he got when they were trashing synths in Fort Hagen, because his veins were numbed with the surge of adrenaline then. He’s not full of that right now. Nothing to numb the pain.

“You think it broke anything?” she whispers, looking down the corridor, then up the stairs. Nothing but dirt and eggs in sight. “Any fractures?”

“Don’t know,” he bites out, “but I can barely use my hand. Get a stim from my right pocket.”

She opts to take one of her own and use it on him. The bruising doesn’t go away immediately, but he doesn’t cringe when she touches his arm a few minutes later. She gives it a light squeeze and that draws a sound of discomfort, but it doesn’t hurt him the way it did before. It’s just bruising now. Leo grumbles that it’s a waste, but she injects him a second time before rolling his sleeves down and replacing his arm guard.

“It may be a waste, but we need to be at our best while fighting, remember?”

He rolls his eyes and motions for her to start walking.

“Maybe once we have our kid back, I’ll go to the library,” Ren tells him in a quiet voice, setting up mines on the floor. There’s a mirelurk buried in a mound of dirt and she has a plan. “I’ll take a bunch of medical textbooks and read ‘em, become a doctor. Doctors make a good living out here, right?”

“You’re not polite enough to be a doctor,” Leo tells her, picking up furniture as silently as he can and moving it across the room. Putting everything up against the walls will minimize the debris that will undoubtedly be kicked up in this little explosion that she has in the works.

“Were you _not_ there when we met Carrington?” She glances at him. “Have you _never_ spoken to Sun?”

“Fair point.”

He shoots the lurk once they’re out of the room. It hops up, skitters towards them in a rage and hits a mine. Things go boom. Eggs splatter and the mirelurk shrieks as it dies. All the ruckus only serves to draw the attention of two other mirelurks, but they take care of it as efficiently as possible. No more slip-ups like earlier. Leo does enjoy how stupid these things are. He can hear the clicking and chittering from down the hall, so he knows that more than the two had to have been alerted by the explosion. But no others have come to the rescue.

Ren has a very effective method of tossing mines at them and backing many, many feet away before having Leo shoot at the crab beasts. The lurks walk over the mines, either die or have their legs destroyed, and then they get shot to death. Simple, yet effective. Less effective when an angrier mirelurk squeezes past its dead friend, clicking and making shrieking noises, but still. Those are dealt with, though the two both get headbutted more than they’re willing to admit.

“I can’t carry anymore eggs,” she tells him one they’re completely cleared out the bottom. There’s half a dozen eggs crammed into her bag, and more than that in his.

“We’ll set them up in the kitchen. They don’t go bad for a while,” Leo says, looking out at the courtyard through an open arch. “The Minutemen will probably be glad for the free breakfast material.”

“I think they’re capable of gathering those things themselves.”

Leo fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be the kind, charitable one between the two of us?”

“Yeah, when it doesn’t involve carrying these heavy fucking eggs.”

He hums, amused. “Alright, fair enough. How are we taking care of the eggs up top?”

Ren pauses for a moment. After some thought, she pulls a molotov from her belt. “Fire?”

“Sounds good to me.”

~~~

Once the eggs up top are dealt with, there’s only two molotovs left between the two of them. That’s fine. Raiders usually have plenty, and the two run into raiders fairly often. She’ll rebuild her stock quickly enough.

Laying down in one of the walkways, Ren’s got the barrel of her sniper rifle poked between the iron bars of the stairs as she shoots eggs in the courtyard. She’s wasting entirely too many bullets on something she could do with her boot, but then again, so is Leo. He’s seeing just how accurately the Deliverer can hit from a distance, and it’s about a 50/50 chance that he’ll hit his target.

“Last cluster,” she tells him, though he can already see. There are only three eggs left. “One egg each, and rock, paper, scissors for the last one?”

“Fine by me,” he agrees.

Pulling her rifle from between the bars, she stands and lines up a shot while Leo does the same. He misses, and tries again as she pulls the trigger. Two eggs explode in a synchronized splatter and she laughs. Nice. Ren turns to say something to him, maybe offer to see if they can do that again together and make that final egg blow up.

An unholy roar fills the area, and _something_ begins to unfurl from the dirt. The mound grows taller and taller, shaped oddly and like nothing either of them have seen before. Soon enough, it’s taller than the walls and Leo’s shoving Ren forward, telling her to head for the bastion with the staircase. Something splashes behind them, but neither slow to see what it is.

“What the fuck _is_ that thing?” she asks, listening as the beast lumbers around outside. Fuck, are they not allowed to have _one day_ that isn’t filled with something dramatically trying to kill them?

“Some kind of mirelurk,” Leo mutters, checking one of his larger guns for ammo. He doesn’t think the Deliverer is going to put that thing down. “How much shotgun ammo do you have?”

“Not a lot.” She busies herself with checking how much rifle ammo she’s still got.

“Shit.”

Reloading the rifle, she glances at her husband. The two most effective weapons he has, other than the Deliverer, are his shotgun and that spiky power fist that he got from Swan’s body a while back. He could probably do some damage with the power fist, but he could also get crushed if he’s that close to the beast.

“So how are we doing this?” Ren asks, wanting to peek out into the courtyard to see where the thing is.

He runs a hand down his face. “We shoot it until we figure out where it’s weak. _Fuck_ , Renee. I wasn’t accounting for something like this.”

“Me either,” she agrees, and gives him a kiss for his troubles. Her poor husband. Maybe if this thing doesn’t kill them, she’ll find some strong alcohol and hole up somewhere with him. Wine date can wait. A blackout drunk whiskey date sounds like something he needs more at the moment.

“So, what are we doing?” She tugs on his sleeve. Feeling like he’s in control of the situation might make him feels better. “Give me some direction here.”

“Right. We’ll be going right. Keep you back to the wall and try and stay out of sight.” He glances around, thinking. “We’ll figure out what its weaknesses are.”

Following against the back wall, they finally come to an opening. The beastly lurk is still hovering near the bastion they escaped into, clicking and making sounds similar to a normal mirelurk. Ren kneels to the side of the open archway, lining up a shot. If it’s anything like a regular mirelurk, its face and underbelly will be more susceptible to bullets. God it’s ugly.

Giving Leo a look, she waits for confirmation. When he’s ready, prepared to be her backup, he nods and gives her the go. She takes the shot, and it _howls_.

It’s too big and bulky to spin around instantly, but it turns pretty quickly. It spits something in their direction as Ren’s backing away, and it splashes off the concrete and lands on a bare portion of her arm. It starts burning almost immediately, and she lets out a cry of pain.

“It’s fucking acid!” she shouts, blindly searching her pockets for something to wash it off with. “Like what a hunter uses but _ten t_ _i_ _mes more_ _fucking_ _painful_!”

“Go to the kitchen and use a sink, I have you covered,” Leo tells her, already backing towards her. He doesn’t take his eyes off the mirelurk.

He doesn’t have to tell her twice. She makes a mad dash for the other end of the Castle and he follows close behind, but the mirelurk can’t move nearly as fast as they can. Nor can it get inside. The sink she turns on blasts as much water out of the faucet as it does the rusted pipes, showering both her arm and her boots. It’s enough to rinse the acid from her skin at least. The water is ice cold, and while she would normally hate that since it’s freezing out, it feels like fucking bliss running over the acid burn.

“I fucking hate the Wasteland,” Ren grumbles, once the acid is off of her. She turns the water off and examines the burn, which is swollen, bright red, and angry. It should heal on its own though, hopefully. “We should have just died when the bombs fell.”

“Then you should have let me take that promotion in Natick. We could have moved closer to the bomb,” he tells her, coming over to look at her arm. “It’s not too bad. We can probably find some burn cream in that first aid shop farther back.”  
“You’re not supposed to put any kinds of creams or gels on a fresh burn,” she argues, switching her guns out. Her shotgun is going to be better for this, she thinks. Ren gestures to the left side of her face, pointing out the burns from an accident in her childhood. “Trust me, I know my shit about burns.”

“Yes, yes, love of mine. You are the all-knowing, all-seeing...” Leo trails off and tilts his head, ears straining. “What is that?”

Ren listens close, but hears nothing other than the shuffling of the angry mirelurk outside. “What is what?”

“ _That_ ,” he hisses, as nearly a dozen hatchlings scurry into the room, intent on the two of them.

He and Ren have a grand time of crushing and kicking the baby lurks, while debating on how the fuck the things got there. The two cleared out every egg cluster in the place, sans the one egg they didn’t get to shoot. All the others were duds. Unless the giant mirelurk just laid them or something, neither have any idea where they could have come from.

Letting out a sharp exhale, Ren looks at the dead hatchlings on the floor. “Do we have anything particularly powerful that we can use?” she asks Leo, trying to get the guts off of her wet boots. “Because I feel like otherwise, this is going to be exactly like it was when we fought Swan.”

“How many explosives do you have?” he questions, moving quick to take inventory of his own. “Two mines, three frags, a molotov, and a weird lunchbox mine.” He gives it a small shake. “I think there’s caps in it.”

“Bottle cap mine. Arturo tried to sell me one.” She sighs and checks her own. “Three more mines, a molotov, I also have three frags, a pulse grenade, and...” Ren holds up a small gun. “Does Preston’s flare gun count?”

“Good enough,” he agrees. He motions her out of the room. “Now give me everything but the flare gun.”

“What the fuck? Why?”

“We’re going back out there. You’re going to stay on the right of the door,” he tells her, watching down the hall. “I’m going to the left. You deal with the babies as they come in, and I’ll throw the explosives. We’ll move around as necessary.”

She scowls and reluctantly hands him her explosives. “And what am I supposed to do, flare the babies to death?”

“If that’s what you’d like. If I were you, I’d probably stomp or shoot, but it’s your call.”

He starts moving, not waiting for her. She’ll get there. Ren huffs in annoyance but follows after, checking to make sure the silenced gun she took from him earlier is loaded. Boots and shoots will be her best best, and then her brain registers what she just thought. _Boots and shoots_. She relays that to Leo and is rewarded with a snort.

“Ready?” he asks once they’ve taken up a place at a door opposite of the mirelurk. She gives him a nod, and he throws the first grenade.

The mirelurk lets out an angry noise as the fragmentation grenade explodes under its legs, but doesn’t seem to have taken too much damage. It waddles forward and screeches when it walks over a sneakily placed mine. While it’s distracted, he lobs a second grenade and ducks behind cover when acid sprays the floor. Good. It’s nice and pissed off. Leo throws a third before pushing off the wall, motioning for her to go back to a different door. Ren goes when he asks, and he activates another mine before sending it sailing across the ground like a Frisbee. Thankfully it doesn’t blow.

It’s a long, awful game of cat and mouse. He runs out of mines too quickly and the plasma grenade, while effective, still isn’t enough to take the thing down. She’s good about keeping the baby lurks off of his ass, so when Ren makes it clear she’d like to have something left over, he uses only his molotov. He knows she likes her fire.

“What do we do now?” he asks, watching her kick away a tiny crab corpse. “I’m rapidly running out of ideas.”

Ren looks at him, and shrugs after a long moment. “I could… flare it in the face? Keep it distracted? You could set up the bottle cap mine and see if that’ll do it?”

Leo nods. It sounds stupid. “No better ideas. Get ready, I guess.”

“What are we going to do if this doesn’t work?” Ren looks down at the flare gun, loading a flare capsule into it.

“Waste all of our shotgun ammo. If that fails, we can outrun this thing and come back with help.”

“Fair. Tell me when you’re ready, I guess?”

Brushing back stray hairs that have come out of his bun, Leo nods. “I’m ready. Go.”

The mirelurk does not take kindly to being shot in the face with a flare. It screeches and staggers, seeming to have a much harder time moving around with all of its legs being kind of broken from being blown up. She does it again, giving Leo enough time to setup a mine where the mirelurk is sure to walk over it.

She gets behind cover while he takes the shotgun off his back, shooting it twice before heading for cover himself. Just as they’d hoped, it goes after him and walks straight over the mine. Bottle caps spray in through the open archways, most in shreds of fragmented metal. Shit. Those look brutal. The mirelurk lets out a roar comparable to the sound it made when it first emerged, but it still doesn’t fall. It’s not looking too great though, which is a plus.

“Shotgun time?” she calls down the hall.

“Shotgun time,” he agrees, and she hears him reload.

Somewhere in their wasting of shotgun shells, Leo shoots something on its face, stopping its acid spray mid-stream. On his side, at least. It’s still spewing at her, but it seems less inclined to go after her after Leo’s done his damage.

It’s getting weaker. Both have noticed, but neither are sure just how much more it’s going to take to put it down for good. While the mirelurk’s attention is firmly on him, Ren makes a split second decision.

“Molotov!” she shouts as warning, dropping her shotgun and taking her lighter out of her pocket. The cloth lights quickly, and she wastes no time chunking the glass straight at the mirelurk’s head. It explodes in a brilliant ball of fire.

It screeches, its two front appendages waving wildly. She scoops up her shotgun and looks up to find Leo somehow on the second story, pumping slugs into the mirelurk’s ugly face. No complaints there. She joins him from the ground floor, going for the legs and underbelly. It’s swaying dangerously now, looking worse for wear.

“Just a little more!” he shouts down to her.

‘A little more’ turns out to be about seven more minutes of continuous fire, but eventually it lets out a horrid noise and pitches sideways. It kicks up a cloud of dust when it hits the ground and Ren coughs, darts to get back behind cover in case it gets back up. Nothing stirs.

She counts to thirty and peeks out from behind the wall, watching Leo take the metal stairs down to the courtyard.

“It dead?” she asks.

Leo shrugs and unsheaths his combat knife. Moving a little slower, he creeps close and regards it before coming right up on it. He kicks a limb, but the lurk remains still. At that, he drives his knife into its face. Still, nothing. “Yeah,” he says, pulling the knife out. “It’s dead.”

Wiping the knife off on his pants, he makes his way back over to her. Well that was a fucking waste. Maybe they _should_ have let Preston and the other Minutemen help. He’s low on shells and he has no doubt Renee is running on empty. They don’t have the fucking caps to replace all of those shells right now. They also don’t have the caps to replace all of the explosives that they used up. That _he_ technically used up. They’ll figure it out, though. They always do.

“We really don’t know the definition of ‘a break’, do we?” Ren asks, kicking dirt in the direction of the mirelurk corpse.

“It was a little more stressful than I’d intended,” Leo admits, eyeing the beast. “But I got exactly what I needed, which was to kill something.”

“… We could have just found a bunch of raiders and done that.” She gives him a side-eye.

Leo smiles, and if she didn’t know him, she wouldn’t have caught the maliciousness behind it. “But the Minutemen, darling. You know that the Castle is the greatest asset-”

Ren covers her ears and lets out an exaggerated groan. “Oh my god, shut the fuck up. I’m divorcing you. I’m filing first thing tomorrow.”

“You’re about two hundred and some-odd years too late for that,” he teases, catching her arms and pulling her in.

She huffs at him, but doesn’t stop him from wrapping his arms around her waist. “So where are we heading next?” she asks, holding her Pip-Boy up while he nuzzles his face into her throat in the most obnoxious way possible.

“Power armor?” he suggests, pressing a few wet kisses to her neck.

She grunts and flips to her notes. Yeah, Nick suggested something about more power armor. Some folks called the Atom Cats should be able to outfit them apparently, though the name makes her worry they may be a raider group. Leo tends to shoot those on sight. Still. He might refrain this once.

“I do have those hazmat suits that Deacon gave me...”

“But the Glowing Sea is too dangerous to go around in those and nothing else,” he finishes. Resting his chin on her shoulder, he does his best to make out her screen without his glasses. “So we go get power armor after we’ve had a chance to rest. Two sets, because the one back at the Red Rocket doesn’t fit ether of us.”

Gauging the distance between the Castle and the marker Nick left, she figures it’s only a few hour away. But she doesn’t know if the Atom Cats will let them stay the night, and she doesn’t want to travel through the night. She tells him as much and he agrees, but leaves it up to her to find them a place for the night.

“The police station we passed looks like it’s secure,” she offers. Its roof was intact and all four walls looked solid.

Another kiss is pressed to her neck. “That works. Lead the way. We’ll have the message sent to Preston that this place is cleared.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is fucking 5k. Most of my past few chapters have been much larger than they were in the first arc. Is that a problem with you guys? Should I start trying to break them up some, or are you all good with the longer chapters?
> 
> Also, life is rough and I haven't had much time to do any writing, so my backlog of chapters had dried up. I apologize because I don't know when I'm next updating, but I'll try to get some work done soon, I promise.


	23. Atom Cats/Quincy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! Sorry I haven't updated in forever, I'm a depressed piece of trash who has no attention span! Also the laptop is busted and we're trying to get a new battery for it. 
> 
> But here we are! I'm kinda writing on this again! I wanted to stick to my old schedule of updating on Fridays, but my 21st birthday is tomorrow (November 6) and I'm feeling festive, so I'm going ahead an releasing this one today.
> 
> TW for entirely too much death and some gore. Y'all should know how these two are by this point.

The Atom Cats, they come to find out, are not raiders. They are very, very far from the definition of raiders and Ren has to force herself not to break down laughing when they start calling her and Leo ‘Jack’. The slang they use is pulled straight out of some bad movie rendition of the 1950’s. Their leather jackets, while super nice, have a stupid decal sewn onto the back. It’s too much. Even Leo looks like he’s having a hard time not cracking up.

Their merchant, Rowdy, tells them pretty straight forward that there isn’t a way for them to get two suits with the pitiful amount of caps they have. The two figured, but it’s still kind of disheartening to hear. Ren offers up their rusted suit that they have out at the Red Rocket and Rowdy does seem kind of interested. Leo could fix the missing arm and leg, he’s still got the training from Anchorage floating in his head somewhere, and they could have it delivered. But it would still only get them an exchange of a slightly better suit. That leaves the problem of one of them lacking protection.

“Look, I know you’re lookin’ for your boy, but we’d be out a lot of dough of we just gave you a suit,” Rowdy says, and to her credit, she does look sympathetic.

“I know,” Ren agrees, sparing Leo a glance. He’s idly talking to a guy called Zeke about pre-war cars, she thinks. “There anything we can do around here, at least?”

Rowdy hums a little. “I could think of something. Could give you a discount. Not much of one, but-”

“But every bit helps,” Ren finishes.

“Yeah. See, there across the pond? That’s the Warwick place. They run a pretty big farm, and we help each other out, you know? Their pump has been chuggin’ out more sludge than water lately, and that’s where you and your fine piece of man come in.” She pauses a moment and heads over to the workbench against the wall, digs through the drawers until she produces a piece of machinery painted baby blue. “You fix the pump, do a good job on it, I’ll knock 200 caps off of the suit of armor.”

“Fine by me. Anything helps.”

~~~

Warwick farms fucking _stinks_ , but they get the part fixed in and the lady in charge even feeds them for their troubles. The trek to and from the farm takes a long while, and the sun is hot in the sky by the time they’re reaching the Atom Cats’ garage for the second time today. The warmth is a blessing, seeing as the ocean just makes everything feel that much colder. Fucking winter.

Rowdy tells Ren and Leo that she thinks they probably did a good job, but she’s still going to check sometime soon. With little else to do, they chat about the suit of armor Leo’s getting in exchange for the one at their home. It’s going to be standard issue power armor, in better condition than the rusted set for sure. It’ll actually be fit for Leo’s height, too.

Ren’s not really interested in the finer details of Leo’s new suit, so she watches the scenery for a while. They’ve picked up enough fusion cores in various places and ammunition boxes that they shouldn’t run out on their way to and from the Glowing Sea. Hopefully. If they’re going through all this trouble for a new suit, she’s going to be _pissed_ if they run out and have to leave one behind. While musing over how that would play out, something catches her eye.

“Hey,” she says, just loudly enough to interrupt Rowdy and Leo. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” Leo asks, coming to her side with Rowdy following close behind.

She points. “Look over that bush. There’s a bunch of somethings moving. I’m not crazy, right? You see it.”

Leo grunts. “I see it. It looks like...” He trails off, tilting his head. He can’t quite make it out, but he doesn’t like it.

The other woman tenses, and something like a snarl pulls at her lip. Rowdy figured out what it was the moment she caught sight of all that green. “Gunners!” she shouts, and the Atom Cats garage very quickly comes to life.

Every Cat who isn’t already in a suit climbs into one, Rowdy included. Orders fly and guns are checked for the battle about to ensue. Ren scowls and checks how much ammo she has, and Leo does much the same. Their ammunition is running entirely too low for this shit.

“Can we go _one fucking day_ without something trying to kill us?” Ren grumbles, loading the 10mm. It’s what she has the most ammo for.

“Much agreed,” Leo says. He’s got that power fist out in the hopes of conserving the ammo he has left. If things get too rough, he can shoot with his right hand and punch with his left. The perks of being ambidextrous.

It ends up not being too much of a challenge. Much easier than most of the shit Ren and Leo have been through since beginning their search in November. The Gunners outnumber the group but not by much, and they’re not as well armed as they should be. Pea shooters like pipe pistols aren’t very effective against power armor, and skulls are particularly weak when it comes to a pneumatic fist covered in rebar hitting them.

Plus, the Cats are uninterested about whatever the Gunners have in their pockets, so Ren and Leo get a nice little cache of supplies.

“Ugh, Gunners,” Zeke says as he passes by, frowning something fierce. “Those wet rags keep trying to get their mitts on our suits.”

Leo shakes the gore off of the power fist, eyeing Rowdy as she leaves her suit in the garage. Though the Cats seem grateful for the help, moods seem to have been thoroughly soured by the appearance of the Gunners. It’s understandable. The cute little eyebot that the Cats had was destroyed, or at least some wiring was fucked up. It’s dinged on the outside and definitely dead. Rowdy huffs and wipes back her sweaty bangs.

“Hate those stupid fuckin’ wet noodle Gunners,” she grumbles to herself, coming back to Ren and Leo’s sides. Her brows come together, and she looks like she’s deep in thought.

Wiping the power fist down, Leo glances at his wife. “Need a new rag. This one is gross.”

“Go wash it in the ocean. Anyhow, how are we doing this?” she asks, speaking before he can bitch about the rag. “Once we get the other suit, however long _that_ takes, are we going to gear up and send messages to Preston, or?”

“What do you mean?”

“When are we telling Preston about the Castle? And how exactly are we getting out old suit here, or rather, when?”

Leo shrugs. “We’ll figure it out. One thing at a time, remember? You’re going to get too stressed out if you keep worrying like this, like what happened after taking down Kellogg. Just make a note so we don’t forget anything.”

“You know what you could do in exchange for a suit?” Rowdy says suddenly, brows furrowed like she’s still thinking.

Ren raises a brow. “What could we do?”

Turning, Rowdy motions for them to follow. She steps out of the gates of the garage, avoiding the bodies on the ground. She stops just a little ways away from the end of the fence, using her outstretched hand to gesture towards some buildings looming in the distance.

“You two know what happened at Quincy, right?” she asks, letting her hand fall. She waits for the two to nod. “The massacre and all that. The place is overrun by Gunners now, and a few of ‘em have power armor. You want a free suit? Bring me back as many pieces of their suits as you can.” There’s something like excitement in her eyes now. “Of course, if one fits ya, just keep it and bring us the other one, we can trade. But if nothin’ fits, you know. You ain’t gotta bring the frames, but the other pieces? That would be tops.”

~~~

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Ren whispers, watching Leo disarm a tripwire.

Leo doesn’t say anything, but he does give her a glance. He absolutely _can_ believe they’re doing this. The two of them live and breathe danger whether they want to or not, and this place is probably more dangerous than their excursions with Swan and the big mirelurk combined.

There’s not much light left out which is perfect for what they’re doing. A nice, good stealth mission of sorts. A suicide mission if they get caught, but Leo isn’t scared. Ren is, a little. It’s a pretty fucking stupid thing, what they’re doing, but they wouldn’t be in this Wasteland if it weren’t for a series of bad ideas before the war.

Quincy is crawling with Gunners, so they’ve been told. From what they saw earlier when they scouted the area, the Cats underestimated how many there are. It’s more than anyone was expecting there to be. Rowdy had told them the place was infested, and for once, Leo is surprised by how under prepared he feels. He truly didn’t expect there to be this many, even with the place being an outpost.

“You be my spotter,” he tells Ren as he watches a few stray Gunners patrol. “I’ll be snapping necks and hiding bodies, and you’ll be keeping a watch for any wandering eyes. You need to be my eyes and ears so I can focus. If we get caught we’re fucked, Renee. I’m counting on you.”

“Thanks for the motivational speech,” she mutters. “’Watch my back or we fucking die’.”

“Exactly,” he agrees, and presses a kiss to the side of her face. “Now move.”

He takes the lead, boots crunching over the broken cement and cracked earth as they move along. The sound is drowned out by the faint whirring of turrets and the idle chatting of lower ranking Gunners walking around on their evening patrols. Hm. Turrets are going to be a problem. The Deliverer is quiet and powerful, but not quiet and powerful enough to escape notice when fired rapidly at a target that won’t die right away.

Motioning with his hand, he ushers her into a storefront just before a wandering Gunner grunt starts heading through. The windows are poorly boarded and they’re provided meager cover by the counter housing a cash register. Leo exhales through his nose a little harder than necessary before peeking through the cracks of the boards.

There’s supposed to be two suits of armor here but three people to watch for. The one without power armor is Baker, a mean son of a bitch with a keen eye and a Fat Man launcher. He can apparently be seen up on a perch on the church’s roof keeping watch of the place. He’s got a birds-eye view of most of the Quincy ruins so Leo and Ren have to really stay low. Baker’s a long range kind of man, so he may not be as much of a challenge if the two of them can get the drop on him.

The other man, the one with armor, is Clint. Preston has mentioned him in short, terse conversations. A traitor to the Minutemen. He’s got a pretty heavily modified automatic rifle that they need to watch for, and he’s decent at hand-to-hand combat if he gets disarmed. Clint is usually up on the overpass with a few Gunners of various ranks. So not entirely difficult, but not easy. They might be able to get the drop on him if he’s sleeping.

Tessa is one they _really_ have to watch for right now. She’s fast and vicious and still carries a lot of mannerisms from her old raider days that make her particularly unpleasant. Another problem is no one has ever seen any kind of rhyme or reason to her patrolling. There’s a real fear that she could pop up at any moment since she doesn’t have any patrol paths. That would send things to shit for the two of them _real_ fast.

Leo really loves the Cats for giving him so much information.

Outside, the stray Gunner wanders past, humming tunelessly as he goes. Leo gives Ren a look that tells her to keep watch as he creeps out from behind the counter. His footfalls are much quieter this time as he edges out, eyes trained on the singular unfocused soldier. Ren’s eyes scan the area, very pointedly doing her duty of keeping watch as there’s a gasp behind her and a sickening crack that follows immediately after.

He drags the body in with him and moves quick to get it stuffed out of sight. He’s already agreed with Renee to save looting for afterward, mostly to keep them on track but also because his wife has a tendency to zone out and become too obvious while emptying pockets.

“Hopefully the dark with hide the body,” he murmurs, lips against the shell of her ear. It won’t do for them to get caught because he’s sloppy with hiding corpses. Not his fault right now. Nowhere good to stash a dead man at the moment other than in this tiny open room.

They stay there for entirely too long waiting for more Gunners to pass, only taking down one other. The Gunner’s neck is unceremoniously snapped like the first and shoved into the dark with the other body, much better hidden with the lack of light.

“Follow,” Leo commands, once, sharp. Quiet. “Stay close.”

His first objective is to kill Baker. Kill Baker, and hide the Fat Man launcher. There’s a very real risk of someone that’s not Leo and Ren having a mini nuke and it would be absolute shit for them to kill Baker and then get blown up by some yuppie.

They almost get caught twice on their way to the church, but they get uncaught just as fast. A pretty little bullet from the Deliverer fixes it quickly, though it makes it a little more challenging to hide the bodies. Neither of them have had enough time to observe and see where people will be crossing through so they both hope real hard that no one comes across the corpses. That would raise the alarm.

He stops Ren with one hand outside of the church, then motions her into the shadows. There’s not enough cover for him to creep around and get a good look inside, but peeking through more boarded windows tells him that there’s at least two Gunners waiting inside. Possibly more. He hasn’t seen Baker on the roof. Glancing back at Ren, he holds up two fingers, then gets back down and creeps in first.

Most of the lights are dimmed for the soldiers to sleep, but it’s still too much. They’re visible. Ren tugs his shoulder and nods towards one of the walls. She breaks away from him and keeps her back to the wall, feet as close to the baseboards as possible. Smart woman. Less chance of the floor squeaking.

She stays behind at his request, keeping her distance as he takes a tortuously long time moving across the church. But she’s got to watch his back. That’s what she’s here for, otherwise he would have left her behind at the garage and just come and done it himself.

Coming up to the bunk beds, he finds both full. One is sleeping facing him, the other snoring up at the bunk above him. Good. Kneeling in close, Leo draws the Deliverer and presses it to the forehead of the one on the bottom. He pulls the trigger before the mans eyes even have the chance to flutter open. The one on top grumbles at the noise, confused and disoriented, and Leo uses that to his advantage and pulls the trigger on that one’s head too. Promptly as he can, he rolls both men over to disguise that they’re dead, tucks them in nice and neat and hides the bloodstains on the pillows.

Ren dims one more light, not enough to draw them any attention, but enough to leave them more shadow to move in. Easier for sneaking. Leo gives her an approving nod and motions for her to turn off another, but she shakes her head. Two is too many. Once she’s done, she crosses the church floor until she’s back at his side.

Baker comes down the stairs as the couple turns the corner of the wall to begin their ascent. The man jolts, looking startles, before snarling and lifting the Fat Man he’s lugging along. It’s already loaded. _Shit_. Leo lets out a startled noise of his own and Ren gasps a little too loudly. Since Leo’s weapon is much smaller and requires less effort to lift and fire, his is ready faster than Baker’s. Leo empties most of the clip into Baker’s skull and prays to whatever God will listen to him that the man doesn’t accidentally pull the trigger as he dies.

Ren grips Leo’s belt as Baker falls, trembling with a surge of adrenaline as he and the Fat Man clatter to the ground. There’s no sudden blinding flash or whatever waits in the afterlife, so both feel it’s safe to assume that they’re not dead. Letting out a sharp breath, Leo shoves his gun into Ren hands and tells her to reload the clip while he puts Baker somewhere. The guy’s head is mostly mush at this point, about as bad as Kellogg's was, so Ren has no complaints with stuffing the clip with more bullets and ignoring the mess of red.

With Baker stuffed back behind the stairs, Leo disarms the Fat Man and searches for a good place to hide the mini nuke. If they’re taking all the armor pieces back to the Atom Cats, they’re going to need as much room in their bags as possible. But he’s not keen on leaving it out in the open. Getting blasted to bits isn’t on his agenda. He eventually settles on putting it in a tool box and locking it with a padlock sitting nearby. Ren can have the key for when they come back and loot.

Still being caution, they work through the top floor of the church though there’s slightly less need for stealth. Neither are sure what waits ahead though. At the top of the final staircase, Leo pokes his head up just enough to see over the base of the steeple. Alright, there’s a wooden bridge that looks like it goes to the overpass, several more buildings with patrolling Gunners. It’s too dark to see much else. He flattens himself to the wall and lets Ren get a look. Once satisfied, they head back down to the bottom of the spiral staircase.

“The bridge leads to the overpass,” Leo tells her, as if it has any meaning to her.

“Yeah?”

“I see a few options. Either we go get Clint and his guards out of the way and hope we don’t get caught, or you provide a distraction.”

Ren raises a brow. “A distraction?”

Leo gives her a nod. “Baker was the most dangerous, and next is Tessa. Rowdy said that Clint doesn’t leave the overpass, so no worries about him.” He leans back on the ancient railing of the stairs. “You snipe someone, we wait here and let them come to us. Not as stealthy as I’d like, but it’ll get the job done.”

“So you’re telling me to provide a distraction for you so that Tessa can punch me in the butthole?”

He blinks, once, simply looking at her.

Ren rolls her eyes. “Fine, fine. I’ll shoot someone in the head, but you better be ready. You’re covering the downstairs and I’m watching these stairs. Just stay out of their way and don’t die, I’ll be sad as fuck if you die.”

He nods. It was probably the plan he was thinking of too. Instead of answering her command, he says, “First you make a joke about Deacon taking you in the ass, and now about Tessa fisting you? Darling, you know if you want something from me-”

She shoves him a little harder than necessary, but it doesn’t matter anyway because he doesn’t budge. “Shut the fuck up, Leo. Go downstairs before _your_ butthole is the one in danger.”

~~~

Leo’s pretty sure Tessa just knocked several of his teeth loose.

Rowdy wasn’t lying when she said Tessa used to be a raider, that’s for fucking sure. She fights like a cat on crack, swinging wildly with her fists once her gun runs out of ammo. He gets caught in the jaw, just once, but it’s a hard hit. Blood fills his mouth, and his vision goes red on the edges as it narrows down to where he can see her and only her. He doesn’t bother to spare any thought to Ren. By the sounds of gunshots and angry yelling coming from the steeple staircase, she’s doing just fine on her own.

Power armor or not, he’s going to do some goddamn damage to her. The flimsy Diamond City helmet she’s wearing is already missing the cage and doesn’t do anything to protect her when he slams the butt of his shotgun into her teeth. Tessa staggers back, snarling in pain and ducking her head down some to protect her face better.

The lesser Gunners have been dealt with already, and Leo kind of hopes that Ren is still watching his back. He’s a little preoccupied with lunging, grabbing Tessa by the helmet and trying to rip the fucking thing off of her. The woman snarls, thrashing out against him. Shoving her backwards seems to throw her off balance and before her suit can re-calibrate and steady her, Leo yanks her forward and brings her down to the floor. Her helmet is durable, it seems, because the strap holding it on won’t snap.

Too comfortable in her suit, even though he’s got her on the ground, Tessa doesn’t fight against him and instead tries to get back to her feet. It’s a mistake on her part. Her helmet doesn’t protect her eyes very well, giving him the advantage to spit a mouthful of blood into her eyes. She lets out a shout of pain, hands flailing. She can’t wipe her eyes due to the suit, but she’s coordinated enough to swing at him. It hurts, but his armor deflects it for the most part. He’s too busy with unsnapping her helmet and getting the damn thing thrown out of the way. Leo finds himself on top of her, fighting to keep her down.

Tessa thrashes, trying to throw him off, but he keeps her pinned in place with his knees on her upper arms. One hand is gripped firm to the breastplate of her power armor while he brings the other down on her face. She’s shouting, screaming for backup that isn’t going to come, and her cheekbone gives right around the time that two of his knuckles do.

“Leo!” Ren calls from up top, and his head snaps to look behind himself for danger.

A gunshot rings out and he’s suddenly soaked into something hot and wet, chunks running down his skin. He looks up at his wife. The barrel of her rifle is resting against the protective railing wrapped around the upper floor. She looks like she’s fine, no trouble on her end. Glancing down, he figures out what he’s coated in.

Tessa’s head has exploded.

“It’s in my _hair_ ,” he bites out, sitting firm on Tessa’s belly to let his adrenaline work its way out of his system.

“And I’m sorry about that,” Ren says, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “But your face is turning purple where she hit you and I’d like to take care of your damage before it gets any worse.”

Letting his breathing slow, he looks up at where she is. There are several corpses surrounding her, in various degrees of beaten and shot. She has a small gash above her brow and she soaked in blood, thankfully not her own. Fuck. How could he be so careless? She could have been seriously hurt. Shaky, Leo gets to his feet and joins her on the second floor.

“We don’t need to clear all the Gunners out,” she tells him, using half a stim on his fractured knuckles. “Just the biggest baddies. And all we really have left is Clint, right? Open your mouth.”

He lets out a grunt of pain as she empties the other half of the stim into his lower gums where he was it.

“Your knuckles still look bad. Should have used a whole one,” she mutters, and uses another half stim. The other half of this one goes into his upper gums. “But yeah. We get him and we’re good, right?”

“Should be,” Leo mutters. His mouth is tingling in the worst kind of way, but at least his teeth aren’t trying to fall out anymore.

~~~

Clint proves to be the easiest.

All of his guards are either dozing or not paying attention. Both Leo and Ren figured they’d be on high alert after the commotion that had just come from the church, but they’re not. Neither are complaining. Lazy soldiers will always be just that: lazy.

A few get a lovely little night-night bullet from the Deliverer, and Leo finds some sick amusement in shoving an unsuspecting Gunner off of the overpass. When his friend comes to investigate the shout, she’s rammed over after him. It’s too easy. They’re supposed to be protecting Clint, aren’t they? It seems they’re doing a piss poor job, but still, neither can find it in them to complain.

Clint is sleeping, snoring lightly. His suit of armor is next to the bed, too far away to be any use as Leo crawls along next to him. The sounds of Leo’s knees scraping along the concrete are drowned out by the chirping of crickets, but Clint’s got the blanket pulled most the way up his head to protect the bald skin from the cold of the evening. Perfect. He doesn’t even stir as Leo presses the Deliverer to his forehead. Certainly doesn’t wake when he pulls the trigger.

“What size is this?” Ren asks, motioning to the armor.

Leo brings his Pip-Boy close, letting the light shine on the recommended size. 5’6, it seems. Just slightly too small for her. But hes a solid six feet, there’s no way he’s going to be able to cram his body into that. Shit, Clint is smaller than his wife?

“You wearing it back to the garage?” he asks, watching her take the fusion core out.

She holds up the toolbox key from earlier. “Yeah, after we loot.”

~~~

“Wow,” Rowdy says, looking them over. Leo’s pack is bursting at the seams with the armor pieces they’ve stuffed in. The suit looks a smidge small on Ren, but it’s in one piece. “You two did some killer work.”

“Thanks!” Ren says cheerfully. “It was a pain in the ass!”

The Cat smiles faintly. She’s tired from staying up all evening, but these two have absolutely made that worth it. Leo’s got a chest piece and some heavily modded arm that looks fuckin’ killer, and the suit that Ren’s climbing out of is pristine. Shiny, clean. Well taken care of, and Rowdy can even see where there was once flames painted on. It’s a stolen suit. A _recovered_ suit.

“Yeah,” Rowdy finds herself saying, nodding as she does. “Yeah, I can definitely get you guys a new suit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, sorry for not updating in two months. Thank you to everyone who has stuck around!


	24. Preparation

It ends up taking two days for both of their suit to be ready.

Leo and Ren spend a lot of time scavenging the first day, trying to gather as much as they can for the trip awaiting them. It pays off, they’d like to think. Plenty of medical supplies at the very least. They’re going to need the rad meds for the trip.

They pass through Jamaica Plains the first day, having been warned about the huge feral population. Neither are particularly worried about the ferals. A rampant feral community means well-protected supplies that others haven’t been able to scavenge. Plenty of untouched supplies and goods that they can take for themselves and to trade. While cleaning house, they find a few dead folks, none of which have decomposed past the point of recognition yet. Haven’t been dead for very long.

“Wanna find the treasure at some point?” Ren asks, wiping a spatter of ghoul blood from her face. She looks down at the corpses at her feet.

Part of the recon team sent to find the treasure. Ken and Tanya, their belongings say. Probably married to each other, if the matching metal rings on their fingers are any indicator. Kind of romantic for them to die together. In some kind of fucked up way.

“At some point,” Leo agrees, moving to rifle through the dead couple’s pockets. “But certainly not today.”

“Hey Leo?” Ren finds herself asking as she looks down at Ken’s ashen face. “Do you think Preston would dislike the thought of General having raider face paint?”

Without turning back, Leo replies with, “Since when have I _ever_ cared about what someone else thinks of me?”

“You care what I think, and I think you’d look good with all that shit caked around your eyes like bad 1980’s eyeliner.”

He looks back at her, a single dark brow raised. But there’s the slightest upward tilt to the corner of his mouth, telling of the fact that she’s completely right.

Clearing out Jamaica Plains rakes in close to 200 caps between the two of them and a shitload of ammunition in the dilapidated houses. Not enough shotgun shells for either of them, but if they can scrape together enough shit, Rowdy can hook them up. The couple muses to each other that they certainly owe the Cats for helping them out so much.

Sometime while picking through some ruins, they catch sight of a courier and have a letter sent up north to Sanctuary. The gist of the letter is telling Preston that the Castle is cleared and is ready for use, and an offer of more caps if Sturges can get the armor fixed up for them and shipped to the Cats’ garage. Hopefully the letter will make it. The two have crossed many dead couriers in their time. While Leo’s not looking, Ren passes the courier some extra bullets in the hope that the gal will find them useful.

Most of day two is spent out in Quincy, clearing the rest of the place out. Leo and Ren only took care of what was necessary on their first excursion here, leaving the rest for a later date. The later date is today, it seems. There aren’t many Gunners left, but the ones still in the town seem on edge. Ren destroyed all of the radios that she could find the night they took the armor, and no one was willing to leave their post, it seems. No reinforcements have come for them. No one is coming to save the remaining soldiers.

It’s all too easy to pick them off one by one. Less easy when a fucking assaultron comes after them, but still not the hardest thing they’ve ever done. They hide out in the deep recesses of the police station until it loses interest. Once it finally wanders off and has forgotten about them, they strike again. It becomes an easier task to disable it once Leo cracks its laser with a well-placed punch with his power fist.

While tearing it open and salvaging it for parts, Ren wedges out some sort of fancy, advanced circuit board. Some components have a sort of silvery metal coating on them which she would bet is actual silver. Weird. She’s always heard gold is a better conductor. She waves it at Leo, but he pays her no mind.

“If we find enough silver, you’re gonna melt some down for me,” she tells him, working a few pieces of undamaged circuitry out of its center. She glances at the scuffed band on her finger when he looks up with silent curiosity. “You’re gonna smelt me a new wedding ring. You know I’ve always liked silver better than gold, anyway.”

He scoffs, using a screwdriver from her pack to take the cracked laser off. “You’re going to be lucky if I ever give you a dead hubflower, you greedy bitch. You were the one to pick these rings out”

They share a small laugh together, sitting together on the floor of the ruined police station. If anyone had told her a year ago that she’d still be here after the end of the world, salvaging scrap with her husband to fund an expedition to find their missing son, she’d have asked what the name of their fantasy novel was. But she finds she’s content sitting here in an unsecured enemy outpost, trading jabs with Leo while they take apart a robot that could have- _should have_ \- killed them easily. Here they are.

Weird.

  


  


  


  


  


“Suits are done,” Ren hears Rowdy say, the other woman’s voice quiet. “Finished yours up about an hour ago.”

She can hear Leo say something, but his voice is even lower than Rowdy’s and she can’t make anything out. Ren sits up, blinking back sleep as she cold morning air hits her face. December has just rolled in and the cold makes that known. She scrubs at her eyes, scowling as her hands graze her icy nose. Leo hasn’t been awake for very long, seeing as his spot in the sleeping bag is still faintly warm. It takes a good few moments of watching her breath fog in the air before she wills herself to unzip from the sleeping bag to join him and Rowdy.

“What’s going on?” she asks once she finds the two, careful to keep her voice low. The other Cats are likely still sleeping.

In the single dim light illuminating the garage, Rowdy looks exhausted but absolutely proud of herself. “I finished up both suits. You two are good to go whenever you’re ready.”

“We can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done,” Ren says, and Rowdy accepts it when Ren offers her open arms. The hug feels almost affectionate.

Rowdy smiles when they break apart. “Just make sure that suit gets here and we’ll call it even. When you two love birds headin’ out?”

Leo looks out towards the open garage door. It’s a new moon out, and the cloud coverage is so thick that the sky is jet black with nary a star in sight. He takes a few quiet steps towards the power armor. “Probably not until at least sunrise. You, however, should go get some sleep.”

There’s no argument there from Rowdy. With Leo’s attention turned away, Ren passes the other a small stack of Pre-War money. It’s not a lot, but she knows each bill goes for at least 3 caps each. More if you find the right vendor. It’s hardly more than 300 caps worth, but it’s more than Rowdy would have otherwise had. The two owe the Cats more than they could ever hope to repay, but they’re going to try to repay their debts nonetheless. Rowdy glances at Leo as she takes the cash, then gives Ren a tired smile before silently heading off for her own bunk.

With Rowdy off to bed, Ren takes a moment to look over her new set of armor. It’s shiny, standard military issue. Only slightly rusted, it looks like a lot of time went into getting these plates shiny again. Fit to her size. The little light bulb in the helmet is even functional. Briefly, Ren wonders if any customization magazines for cars still exist. Ones that describe how to do certain paint jobs. She could probably figure out how to translate them into power armor paint jobs, if she spent enough time looking at them. She would like it. Leo probably would, too.

Leo definitely would, now that she thinks on it. Before everything went to shit, there was a picture of him tucked away in their photo album. It was from when they were both stationed in Anchorage, just in separate outposts. His power armor had some sort of paint job on it, and the breastplate had an absolutely ridiculous cartoon shark face painted on. His helmet was tucked under his arm, hair free of its hair tie, and his mouth caught half-way in a genuine smile. She could paint that on his new set, if he wanted.

Her head comes to rest on his shoulder once he comes close, and Leo leans into the touch. His arm curls around her waist when he feels her shiver. They’ve both been sleeping fully dressed and with their coats on for at least a week, but Boston’s winter seems to be just as bitterly cold as it was before the war. At least it’s not snowing. Radioactive rain, they can deal with that. Radioactive snow, however? Absolutely not.

“So what’s our plan?” Ren asks him finally, voice feeling too loud in the quiet of the early morning.

“Not moving out until daylight, like I said.” He brings his right arm up, his Pip-Boy screen already set to the map. Several locations are filled in on his that are bare on hers, and Ren is pretty damn sure they haven’t been that far south or west yet. “Bluejay lent me an up-to-date map, which let me map out our little trip even better. We’re going to do this in two parts to use our limited daylight to our advantage.”

The two find themselves sitting on the cold concrete, pouring over his map while he speaks. There’s a small settlement- a single home, really- just at the edge of the Glowing Sea that they can stay at when evening comes on the first day. Preston has wanted someone to go check up on the place, but it’s so far out of the way and there’s not enough manpower in the Minutemen yet. But Leo and Ren will make sure everything is alright. They’re going to be avoiding as much trouble as possible other than whatever issues Somerville Place may be having. Which means avoiding every major outpost along the way, like the half dozen raider camps and the main Gunner base. The second stretch will lead them right into the heart of the Glowing sea, where they’re hopefully going to be able to track down information about this Brian Virgil.

“And from there, we see if we can find this elusive scientist,” Leo finishes, letting his tired arm drop into his lap.

Ren nods, slow. She turn to look out over the water, eyes searching over the horizon that’s beginning to glow. Sun up soon. Less than an hour.

“So this is it?”

It’s his turn to rest his head on her shoulder. She leans into the touch just as he had, closing her eyes and enjoying his warmth, the comfort of his closeness. Leo’s hand finds hers on the cement and he holds it, gentle but firm.

“It’ll be alright, my love,” he says quietly, and he means it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of short, but it was supposed to be combined with the next chapter and it was entirely too long that way. Plus, the sweet endings are what I strive for.
> 
> And sorry, for the thousandth time, for the erratic update schedule. I'm doing my best, but I'm job hunting and there's a ton of holidays (including birthdays and a wedding) that keep cropping up and it's all kicking my ass. Thank you all for being patient with me.
> 
> But hey! I'd like a little interaction from you guys! I'm having trouble deciding on whether or not I want them to keep synth Shaun once they reach that point (I mean they're Railroad and Minutemen, you know they're blowing the place to high hell). So I want to hear from you guys. You can take my poll [right here](https://linkto.run/p/GV4GDKFG), and if you select 'other', please come back and let me know what your opinion is!


	25. Glowing Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like putting warnings for death and gore at this point aren't needed, but eh. Some minor deathclaw violence and death

The first leg of the journey goes better than expected, for once. With the help of the map they were given, they’re able to avoid the worst of the trouble that they would have otherwise come across. There _is_ the problem of another giant fucking mirelurk at some point in the afternoon, but they see it from a while out and manage to give it a wide berth without getting too far off track.

Someville has a minor raider problem which is dealt with rather swiftly. Mostly because the neither of them have even climbed out of their armor when the raiders decide to descend and attack. Ren ushers the children inside and instructs them to hide under their beds to keep them safe from any gunfire, while Leo barks at their father to aim at vital parts. Brains, hearts, throats. He handles the leader of the group, ripping the drugged up woman’s shitty power armor apart with his gauntlets before pulverizing her head into a messy pulp. They work quick to get rid of the worst of the bodies before the children can see. It’s inevitable that they’re going to see bodies with the world they live in, but there’s no need to traumatize them so young.

The father is more than happy to let them camp in his living room for the night. Both children are in awe when Leo takes his hair down, never having seen any that long before. He would chalk it up to them living so far from others, being so isolated from other humans, but his hair is the longest he’s seen in all the Commonwealth. Long hair just isn’t a good idea when clean water is better devoted to drinking, rather than washing hair that’s so long that it can be sat on.

Morning comes all too soon. They got more sleep than they usually do, but neither Ren nor Leo can pretend they’re even remotely excited at the prospect of wading into a pit of radiation. Hell, they might even have to go to ground zero, if they can’t find anything anywhere else. They’ll likely have to go to ground zero anyway. From the idle chatter they’ve heard the guards in Diamond City sharing with each other, they know there’s a high likelihood of a group of Children of Atom living there, and they could know something.

Even knowing they have enough supplies to take care of themselves if they take on too many rads, they still find themselves idling at a small sign proclaiming the ‘edge of the glowing sea’. Looking out, all they can see is a world swirling in yellow and green. Thunder rolls in the distance. The briefest flashes of lightning illuminate the unnaturally colored clouds swirling across the irradiated land. Farther out, a little further than he can make out, Leo can see the ground split open and shiny like it’s leaking oil from the underground. If Ren believed in that kind of stuff, she thinks this might be what Hell looks like. They try to hold hands briefly, but the sound of metal on metal is too jarring.

“You sure you don’t just want to make a new one?” Ren asks, voice coming out fuzzy through the helmet. She’s kind of serious at this point.

“I’m reconsidering my stance on that at this point,” he replies, but takes the first step past the sign.

“Should we have brought Nick?”

Leo shakes his head, which is a little hard to make out since the helmet is moving kind of stiffly. “This is our fight, not his. While I deeply appreciate everything he’s done to help us with this, I don’t think we need to endanger him. He’s already falling apart.” Without prompting, he turns his headlamp on. “It’s too dangerous out here to risk it. I’d only feel safe bring him out here in power armor, and you know how much trouble we went through just to get these.”

She gives a nod and turns her own on, which turns out to be a good idea. Within ten minutes of walking, the wind shifts and those nasty yellow clouds begin to swirl overhead and the sky darkens. Both of their Geiger counters begin to click. It’s gentle, just the low-level radiation being swirled up in the air, but the longer they walk, the more static it begins to spit.

Checking his map, Leo relays that there should be a half-buried Red Rocket about 45 minutes away. It’s their first checkpoint apparently. He mentions something about a cache inside, a lead-lined box full of supplies for folks stupid enough to venture out into the Glowing Sea. It’s customary to replace what you take, he tells her, so they’re going to be dumping off some of their .38 bullets. Possibly some clean water if she’s feeling generous.

They take wide arcs around groups of ferals, wanting to avoid making too much noise. The danger out here is about twice that of what it is in downtown Boston. Everything out here is exacerbated by the radiation. The bugs aren’t too difficult, but everything else? Ferals at every turn, buried buildings that could collapse under you at any second and leave you trapped. Deathclaws and radscorpions. They’ve already seen half a dozen scorpions that they _somehow_ managed to avoid catching the attention of. Leo and Ren have directly encountered all of two radscorpions in their time in the Wasteland, and if they’re bigger and badder out here? Yeah. They want to keep away from that completely.

Both do well to avoid most danger until they reach the first checkpoint. Leo motions to the door, murmuring that they’ve arrived and that they should probably get inside. The radscorpion blends into the scenery so well that they don’t even see it until its stinger bounces off of the back of Leo’s armor.

“Shit,” he hisses out. He kicks at it while reaching for his shotgun, but it burrows underground with an unreasonable speed. It must have followed them from a way’s back. “Renee, get in there _now_.”

She doesn’t argue. Even in power armor the door is hard to wedge open, being half rusted shut from the standing water around it. But she gets it open as the scorpion reemerges and Leo shoves her inside, ducking in behind her and slamming it shut before it can strike. He sighs through his helmet, which comes out sounding like TV static.

“I truly hate those things,” Leo mutters, letting his shotgun droop.

Ren gives a sympathetic nod and opens her mouth to agree, but ends up taking several rapid steps back when the ground under her starts to shake. The scorpion bursts through the floor and darts towards Leo the second it spots him, skittering through the water entirely faster than is fair. She gives a shout of surprise and pulls her own shotgun, but Leo’s already firing.

He knows it’s not a good idea to fire in such close quarters. His ears are violently ringing after only the second shot and he knows just how many times you have to shoot these things to take them down. It’s not any better when his wife joins in. It certainly dies faster, but they’re both half-deaf by the time the scorpion stops moving.

“Fuck those things,” Ren mutters, pulling her helmet off. It’s safe to in here, seeing as there’s no more static coming from her Pip-Boy. She winces a little as she moves and wonders if she should use a stim. The scorpion managed to get its stinger in a bend in her armor, and her knee is rapidly swelling. Shaking her head, she asks, “So where’s that cache at?”

She sloshes through the knee-deep water, going around Leo to the storage cabinets to shove any and all tools into her bag. Leo’s slower about moving, taking his own helmet off to get a better look around. His eyes scan the room, occasionally moving back to Ren as she rips another metal drawer out to rummage through the contents.

“Not entirely sure,” he admits. “All I know is there’s supposedly a cache here.”

Frowning, Ren seats herself on the nearest cabinet. The metal groans under the weight of the power armor, but it doesn’t break. Not wanting to climb out of her power armor just to use a stim, she pulls one from her bag and waves it in Leo’s direction. He’s kind about injecting it. Mostly because it has to go into her neck, but aslo because she’s undoubtedly going to stim him again at some point and he’d rather not give her any reasons to exact revenge.

They find the cache eventually when they open the garage door. There’s rubble built up, along with a truck flattened to the building. The little yellow crate sits neatly in the bed, but there’s nothing in it that they can really get any use out of. Ren still leave a little bit of ammo and water in it, just in case they ever come back here and need it.

“Our next checkpoint is… some kind of old factory,” Leo grunts out as he’s forcing open the door to the Red Rocket. He doesn’t see any scorpions so he figures they’re good. “I never had any reason to go farther south than Natick so I have no idea what it was, though there’s speculation they made parts for heavy construction machinery.”

“How do you know all of this?” She flicks her helmet light back on.

“Bluejay, Johnny, and Zeke have all explored out this way for parts. They warned me about what they could from the memories they have.” He turns his own light on and adjusts the helmet to give him a better field of view. “There’s a very real risk of the place collapsing under us, so we’re going to skirt it as best we can.”

It’s a little slower going trying to get to the factory. There’s an unreasonably large hoard of ferals along the way that rise from a shallow pool of irradiated sludge and the moment Ren fires her pistol, a group of bloatflies rise from the other edge of the water. It’s not a lot of fun trying to fight off seven ferals and several flies, even in power armor. The pistol was marketed as silent and honestly? She’s taking it back to Arturo. The silencer is shit.

Leo shakes out his fists when everything is finally all said and done, flinging gore and viscera from various creatures from the metal gauntlets. He doesn’t have to have his helmet off for Ren to know just how intense his frown is.

“Haven’t even had this armor for a day, and I’m never going to get the stink of dead ghouls off of it.”

She nods a little and motions out in front of them a moment later. “How far until the factory?”

“We’re here. If we were to climb these rocks, the factory would be below.” He scans out, ensuring everything is dead. “We’re in the process of skirting it now, but once we’re done we’ll be in the home-stretch to get to ground zero.”

“Then… let’s get this over with. I’m already not feeling all that great.”

Another static-y sigh crackles through from him as he sets off. “I know it’s a joke asking you to be quiet in one of these suits, but do your best. Possibly even turn your light off. I was told that the closer to ground zero that we get, the more deathclaws there’s going to be.” On cue, his own light clicks off. “That’s the last thing we need to be dealing with.”

Ren turns her own off after some deliberation. It’s dark out here even though the sun should be up by now. The cloud coverage is so darkly colored and dense that most of the light must not be making its way through, she guesses. It’s harder to see, but she trusts her husband’s judgment.

She’s not sure what has him so irritated, but she can hear it in his voice. The scorpion was an annoyance, as were the bugs and ghouls. Something like that wouldn’t muddy his temper unless he was already in a bad mood, which he didn’t seem like he was this morning. Even all the ghoul gunk isn’t that bad. It’ll be smelly for a while until they can wash it and he knows that. He’s not one to be angry over nothing, so what could it be?

Maybe it’s just the trip all together? That would make sense. Ren’s been showing her nerves since the beginning, but her ever-strong partner has held it together and taken the lead in getting this mess sorted out. Maybe his nerves are getting to him now.

“I love you, Leo.”

He exhales, almost a sigh but not quite. “And I love you, Renee,” he tells her, tone just a touch softer than previously.

She comes to his side instead of trailing behind and instinctively reaches for his hand, but stops before the metal can jar together. Ren doesn’t know how to comfort him without touching, but she tries anyway.

“Everything will be alright,” she says, and he gives her a small nod. They both find themselves trying not to grab the other’s hand.

All will be fine.

~~~

Leo doesn’t manage to dodge back in time, and earns a hard swipe of claws to his chest. Even in the heavy suit, he goes flying. The landing is just as rough as it was the first time he was in this position, and he knocks his head when the helmet slams into the ground. It takes a moment for his vision to clear but he struggles to his feet the entire time, only keeping his balance because of the suit’s servos.

“Cut its belly!” Ren shrieks, kicking her feet at the deathclaw’s face as it lifts her up over its head.

He doesn’t make it in time, and she goes skittering through the dirt as he just had. Renee had told him once that when he’d fought the deathclaw in Concord, he’d looked like a toy soldier when it picked him up and tossed him around. Leo finds himself agreeing with the sentiment as she settles in the dust, groaning out curses. She starts climbing back up almost immediately, at least.

The beast turns its attention back to him but lets out a growl when Ren shoots it in the face. The bullet bounces off of its skull, doesn’t even seem to do any damaged other than a scratch, but its focuses back on her after she fires off a second shot, then a third.

“Get your fucking tire iron, cuts its fucking belly!” she shouts, taking several quick steps back. She holsters her gun. “I’m only going to let it throw me one more time!”

The tire iron? Shit, he forgets that he has it. Even with it lightly tinging off of his suit the whole walk, he still never remembers that its there. He unhooks it as the deathclaw starts to rush his wife, and gives its blade a hurried look. Wickedly sharp, faintly stained with blood. Hopefully sharp enough.

For a second time, it holds her high up in the air, a snarl on its face. He sprints in, holds the blade above his head and swings down like he’s chopping firewood. The tip of the blade just barely catches, though when it does it tears all the way down. The deathclaw shrieks and drops her, with Renee almost landing on his head.

It’s not nearly as bloody and gory as it was the first tome he fought one, but it’s still brutal. He’s going to have to get its belly open one way or another. Leo ducks when it swipes at him and as soon as he’s righted himself he brings the tire iron back down, catching much deeper this time. It staggers back with the second hit. On a split second decision, Leo takes a third swing at its throat.

He presumes it hits, mostly because his field of vision is very suddenly obscured with a heavy spray of blood. There are no sounds from the deathclaw other than it crashing into the dust. Possibly thrashing around, but again, he can’t fucking see.

“What’s going on?” she calls to Renee as he backs up, keeping the tire iron up.

“You cut the thing’s neck wide open. It’s pretty much already dead.” She sounds rather unconcerned, though faintly out of breath.

He lets out a heavy breath, letting the weapon droop. God _damn_ he hates deathclaws. “Would you do me a favor and clean my visor off, please?”

Once cleaned up, they decide to leave the deathclaw. They don’t have the supplies to keep the meat clean in their bags, nor will the meat be good by the time they reach civilization once more. Not to mention they’re both starting to get sick now. The rads are too high even with the suits, and they need to dose themselves with rad-away soon.

Leo gestures to the hills of rocks that the deathclaw has descended from. “That’s it. In there is ground zero, and the group of Children. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready to be out of this hellhole. Let’s go.”

Thankfully there are no more deathclaws in their way. But there’s quite a bit of climbing to be done since the singular path they found is far too narrow to be traversed in power armor. Reaching the top takes no longer than ten minutes but it seems to go on for years, with the anticipation of wanting to see what’s below. That, and the struggle to get their footing in these clunky suits. Ren and Leo stop once they finally reach the peak and find themselves staring down into the bomb crater.

Through the haze of radiation, there are buildings in there, ones that have clearly been erected after the war. Scraps of metal and wood all held together with glue and prayer, small bridges and catwalks that look like they could collapse at any second. Pools of the radioactive sludge everywhere, likely knee-deep in spots. Most unbelievably are the various Children milling around, some standing in the sludge, some worshiping on their knees. Basking in Atom’s glow. Living in radiation as if it’s merely humidity and not poison.

“This is...” Ren trails off, and even with the helmet Leo can hear how thick her voice is. “This… this is where everything started. This is the reason our lives… and people are _worshiping_ in it.”

“Are you going to be okay going down there?” Leo asks. He won’t make her.

“Yeah. I’m not… I’m not exactly upset? But I’m sure not feeling fantastic. Let’s just get this done with, I _really_ need some radaway.”

With that, she starts climbing down, Or tries, at least. She can’t get a very good footing. Leo angles himself so that he can lean against the rocky wall and slide his way down, and Ren adapts the maneuver to use as well. Once on the semi-solid ground, they move towards the metal shacks.

None of the Children pay them any mind, choosing to pray instead. A few offer words to Atom that seem directed more at Leo and Ren, but keep their eyes shut and hands held to the sky. Ren tries to speak with one, but the woman very pointedly keeps praying. Rude, but at least they’re not opening fire on sight like the rest of the Children in Boston seem to.

There’s nothing of note when they pass through the shacks. Both of their Geiger counters have started getting louder and louder the closer to the center they get, though their suits thankfully block out the worst of the radiation.

“Should we try those other shacks up there?” Ren asks as they emerge from the metal buildings. “There’s a lady staring at us.”

Leo shrugs at her, which she takes as a yes. The woman stares them down as they approach the second set of shacks and backs away once they get close enough. A moment later, she appears on the stairs leading down from the second story.

“Stop right there, strangers,” the woman demands as they get close. “You approach Atom's holy ground. Why? State your purpose, or be divided in his sight.”

“We mean no harm,” Ren calls. “Me and my husband are looking for someone named Virgil.”

The graying woman tilts her head to the side and regards them for a long moment. “Virgil? Yes... We know this Virgil.” Her eyes narrow. “What do you want with him?”

Not wanting to beat around the irradiated bush, Leo tells her outright. “We need his help reaching the Institute.”

“I have heard of this Institute. They hide themselves, trying to avoid the power of Atom. A futile effort.” She smiles to herself a little, wryly. Her expression smooths back out a moment later. “In truth, this Virgil has caused some concern. Some believe his presence is an affront to Atom.Though he came to trade with us on a few occasions, we have had little other contact with him. It was quite clear he wanted to be _left alone_.” She lets her last words hang between the three of them for a long pause. Once she feels her point has gotten across, she nods her head in a direction. “You can find him southwest of the crater, living in a cave. I would approach cautiously, were I you. I feel he does not want visitors.”

“Thank you, Sister,” Ren says as politely as she can.

“Mother,” the woman corrects with a small smile. “I am _Mother_ Isolde. Carry on with your journey, strangers, and may you be blessed by Atom’s glory.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I complained about life kicking my ass in the last update, including job hunting. Well, an hour after I posted that update, I got a call that I got a job! I don't know what I'll be doing or if I'll be part or full time, but I'll try to keep up with writing and updating regularly. I might just switch to updating on Tuesdays instead of Fridays, unless you folks would prefer Friday updates.
> 
> Also! If you haven't already, you can check out my [Crawl Out tag](http://iwillpooponthefloor.tumblr.com/tagged/crawl-out) on tumblr. I post some snippets every now and then which gives you a little rough draft preview of pieces of upcoming chapters. but if you don't want the spoilers, that's more than fine.


	26. Virgil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More deathclaw death but not super explicit

“I can’t believe there was another fucking deathclaw out there,” Ren says, ripping her helmet off in the process. Her hair is plastered to her with sweat and she’s just about to the point of _begging_ Leo to get some rad-away out already. She hates winter, but being cooked in her suit with radiation is just as bad. “At least it died fast.”

He grunts in agreement and gets his own helmet off. He was smart enough to tie his hair back, but it’s still hot. They both climb out of their respective suits and sit on the ground near the opening of the cave, gently sticking the other with a drip of rad-away. Neither have much to say. Virgil must be in here. If he’s not, it’s an oddly defended cave. There are can chimes strung up everywhere, the faint whirring of turrets echoing out from deeper in. Leo wouldn’t be surprised if there were caltrops on the ground too. At least Virgil- or whoever the hell might be in here- hasn’t come out yet with guns blazing. Hell, he- they?- might not even know the two of them are here.

With the cave owner blissfully unaware of their presence, Leo and Ren get enough time to guzzle down some well deserved water and toy around with their Pip-Boys for a little bit. They’re even allotted enough time for the rad-away to run through their systems.

Ren finds herself idly scrolling through the different menus on her Pip-Boy, looking through some of the lesser-used functions. There’s some kind of subtab for organizing notes, which she doesn’t have much patience for, and another that gauges ‘S.P.E.C.I.A.L.’ stats based on several skill sets. Her ‘S’ and ‘E’ are pretty decent, as is ‘I’. Creepy that it can measure her ‘C’, because the only way it can measure social interactions like that is if it’s as smart as her. But she’s going to pretend that isn’t real. Glancing over the stats a moment longer, she gives an appreciative nod. She’ll have to compare with Leo later.

A flick of a knob sends her over to a new menu that she’s never seen before. Messages? Ren’s confused, but she finds her question being answered as a happy Vault Boy pops up with a speech bubble. It explains that the message tab works as an ‘instant messenger’ to any nearby Pip-Boys, visible between only you and the other user. It can be used to send reminders, share work notes, or even ask your crush to prom! Once she reads through and presses the ‘OK’ on screen, it prompts her to put in her name. She does, hesitantly, and adds her birthday when requested.

 _Does this look okay?_ it asks, and pops up some of the information. RV11062049? Well, yeah, that looks like her initials and her birthday. She presses “OK’ again and it tells her she’s set up! And then it’s gone, giving her a mostly empty screen. There’s a long list of UNKNOWN: INACTIVE, but a singular UNKNOWN: ACTIVE at the bottom. She presses it, and is presented with another empty screen with a singular spot to write something. So, she does.

A few beats of silence pass, then Leo’s screen lights up. He looks at it, confusion clear. Ren finds herself stifling laughter as he goes as far as to pull out his glasses, giving his Pip-Boy a look of complete bewilderment.

Leo gives her a couple of glances as he slowly uses the touch screen, hesitantly typing.

Ren looks at her own screen as it lights up. There’s a sudden delight when she realizes that there’s indeed something written under her own message, and it not from her.

RV11062049: hey does this work

LA02232043: What the fuck is this?

She grins over at him. Leo looks much less than impressed, dark brows drawn together behind the black glasses rims.

RV11062049: some kind of messenger!

LA02232043: I don’t like that.

RV11062049: could be useful though

Leo rubs at his face, knocking his glasses askew in the process. He takes them off after that, tucking them inside the breast pocket where they belong before getting to his feet. Glancing over his shoulder to the cave defenses behind the two of them, he raises his arm up and taps away at the screen.

LA02232043: If you’re ready, then let’s get this over with.

They’re careful as they pass the can chimes, doing their best not to brush against them and set them off. The turrets follow both of them but don’t fire. Good. Hopefully it stays that way. There’s not a lot of cover in here, and the firing would undoubtedly draw the attention of whoever is camped out in here.

As it turns out, the cave owner seems to already be aware of their presence. It’s waiting for them as soon as they creep into what looks like a makeshift lab.

A super mutant in filthy rags stops them, lip curled into a snarl. His clothing is bursting at the seams, barely held together in some spots and completely ripped open in others. A pair of gold-rimmed glasses are held onto his head with a thin cord and… they’ve never seen a super mutant wearing _glasses_ before. Is this one smart? Is this maybe a pet that Virgil made, some kind of super-intelligent mutant?

“Hold it!” the mutant barks out, glancing quickly between the two of them. “Take it nice and slow, no sudden moves... I know you're from the Institute, so where's Kellogg? Huh? Trying to sneak up on me while you distract me?’ He sounds far more human than any mutant that they’ve come across, though far more manic. “It's not going to work! I'm not stupid, I knew they'd send him after me!”

Ren swallows and gives Leo a glance before coming back to the mutant. “Are you... Virgil?”

The snarl on the mutant’s face doesn’t lessen. “You know damn well I am. What're you doing here?”

“We need your help.”

Virgil scoffs at her, though she can’t help but notice him shooting Leo looks. “My help? With what? How did you even find me, anyway?”

“We’ve tracked you down. We need information on the Institute.”

“The Institute? So, they did send you, didn't they. You're working with Kellogg!”

“Whoa, hey, calm down. You’ve got it all wrong. He’s been...” she gestures to her husband who drew his weapon the moment Virgil did. “Kellogg’s been taken care of.”

Virgil’s hand, outstretched with the gun, is faintly trembling. “Dead? He's... dead?” He then shakes his head and snarls out, “No, don’t lie to me! I know you’ve brought this Courser here!”

He takes a step back at that, pointing an accusatory finger at Leo. He’s practically vibrating with nervous energy, his finger hovering over the trigger. Virgil is relatively untrained in combat if he’s from a presumably safe place like the Institute, but it doesn’t take a ton of knowledge to know how to fire a gun and kill someone with it. Point at a vital organ, blast it until it’s mush. Easy.

Leo tilts his head though, just slightly and blankly asks, “What’s a Courser?”

“I’m serious,” Ren tells Virgil. “We- my husband and I- we killed Kellogg. He’s dead, a rotting pulp where we left him. I broke my knife on his skull and everything. We don’t have the proof anymore, but if we were working for Kellogg, why would we stand here and make pleasantries instead of just shooting you and getting it over with?”

“He really is dead?” Virgil shakes his head, gun wavering like he’s thinking of lowering it. “There's no question it's difficult to believe.Kellogg was ruthless... There's a reason the Institute used him to do their dirty work for so many years.I knew they'd send him after me; tried to prepare for it.” He uses the end of his gun to gesture behind them at the bulk of his defenses. “But I still wasn't sure I'd make it...And so you two. You killed him, eh? Then what do you want with me?”

Ren nods a little, then steels herself. “We need whatever information you've got. Anything to help the two of us get in to the Institute.”

That makes him finally drop the barrel of his gun towards the dirt. Virgil gives her an incredulous look, even glances at Leo to see if she’s serious. “I'm sorry, what?You want to get in to the Institute? Are you _insane_?”

He breaks away from the two of them, starts pacing. He shakes his head and stops after a moment, a little closer to the two of them now. “Never mind how nearly _impossible_ that is, even if you were to succeed it'd almost certainly end in your _immediate death_. What reason could you _possibly_ have for taking that kind of risk?’

“We’re trying to find our son. The Institute kidnapped him.”

Next to her, Leo makes a quiet grunt of agreement.

“Oh. Oh no. I had no idea. I'm sorry.” Virgil’s shoulders sag in just the slightest. He holsters his gun and rubs a massive hand across his face. “Yeah, the Institute has taken people from the Commonwealth in the past.If your son is one of them… I can understand why you'd want to get in there.I can help, but...” He rubs his face again, but looks her in the eyes once he drops his hand. “I'm going to need something in return.”

Ren gives him a somewhat eager nod. “You help us, and we'll help you. No problem.”

Virgil turns away and mumbles something that sounds like “can’t believe I’m doing this”. But he waves at them to follow and descends down a small slope deeper into his makeshift lab. A protectron trundles around, clunky and cute in its own way as it beeps out small messages.

“All right. If I help you, you're going to do something for me. Before I was forced to leave, I was working on a serum to reverse this mutation. It could return me to normal. You understand?”

Virgil reaches a re-purposed workbench covered in papers and pencils. Some of the pencils have been snapped in half, and both Leo and Ren are pretty sure it wasn’t on purpose. The super mutant picks up one of the unbroken ones as delicately as he can and slides over a relatively unmarked page, getting to work as soon as he’s got the paper where he wants it.

Ren lifts her arm while the two of them wait on Virgil, scowling as she tries to use the clunky touch screen interface. It works after a moment, and half a minute passes until Leo’s Pip-Boy screen lights up. His eyes are drawn to the sudden brightness his wrist. Leo glances at her before begrudgingly seeing what’s on his screen.

RV11062049: hey leo

“Stop that, Renee,” Leo mutters, giving her a look from the corner of his eye.

She does not, in fact, stop. His screen flashes once more and he scowls over at her mischievous face.

RV11062049: do you think hes like regular super mutants and doesnt have a dick or do you think he has, like, a massive dong shoved in there

Frankly, if looks could kill, the look Leo gives her would have turned her to ash already. He very pointedly changes to the menu screen on his Pip-Boy and doesn’t answer her question. Virgil’s ‘massive dong’ isn’t something he’d like to think about at the moment, or at any point in time, in fact. Leo keeps his eyes firmly trained on Virgil’s shoulder and not on his suit where Schrodinger’s Dong may or may not be.

Virgil sets the pencil down and turns. “So if you get in there, I need you to find it in my old office, and bring this to me. I think that's pretty reasonable, in exchange for helping you.” He passes a look between the two of them before handing the paper to Ren. It’s got a crude sketch on it, labeled in big block handwriting. It’s legible enough for her, at least.

“This is what the serum looks like?”

Virgil gives a single, stiff nod. “Yes. That’s the container and the vial that holds the serum itself.” When no more questions come, he speaks again. “All right. Let's talk details. First thing's first. You know how synths get in and out of the Institute?”

Ren pulls her gaze from the paper. “Mmhmm. They use some sort of teleporter.”

The super mutant lets out a quiet, impressed hum. “Well, well... Not many know about it. Pretty closely guarded secret. You've certainly done your homework. It's commonly referred to as the ‘Molecular Relay’. I don't understand all the science behind it, but it works. De-materializes you in one place, re-materializes you in another. I'm sure it sounds crazy, but it's a reality.”

“We’ve seen it,” she tells him, then hesitantly adds, “Sort of.”

He looks like he wants to ask how, but doesn’t. “The Relay is the only way in and out of the Institute. You understand? The only one. That means you're going to have to use it. Now judging by your answer earlier, neither of you have seen an Institute Courser, have you?”

“Not a one. That we know of, that is.”

“Hmph. You’d know. Another secret of the Institute. Trust me, it's good that you haven't found out the hard way. Coursers are Institute synths, designed for one purpose. They're hunters. Operations go wrong, a synth goes missing, and a Courser is dispatched.” He leans down a little, looking her more closely in the eyes. He gives Leo the same looks before straightening up. “They're very good at what they do, and you're going to have to kill one.”

Kill? It’s the magic word that gets Leo to respond for once. “Can’t be too much harder than Kellogg. Point us in the right direction.”

Virgil makes a face. “Well, I suppose your enthusiasm counts for something.”

The super mutant goes back to the workbench and grabs a smaller scrap of paper. This sketch takes him a little less time, and a moment later Ren’s got a second paper in her hands that both her and Leo examine. It’s another piece of tech, looks like something they would have pulled out of Kellogg.

“Every Courser has special hardware that gives them a direct connection to the Relay in the Institute. It's embedded in a chip in their heads.” Virgil taps the base of his own skull. “You need that chip. But to get it, you'll have to find a Courser. Now I don't know exactly where you can find one. They haven't sent any after me, and sitting here waiting doesn't seem like a good plan. You're going to have to hunt one down. I can tell you where to start, and give you some help finding one, but you'll have to do the dirty work.”

Ren scratches at her arm, vaguely feeling the rad-away doing its job. It flushes the radiation out through urine, and she needs to piss. Bad. But she ignores it and nods. “Yeah, let’s get to it.”

“Right. The primary insertion point for Coursers is in the ruins of CIT, directly above the Institute. So you'll want to head there.” He hesitates, and asks if they need him to try to draw a map of that too, which they decline. Leo’s sure of where it is.

Virgil gives a steady nod, like he’s thinking. “Now, the Relay causes some pretty heavy interference all across the EM spectrum. You've both got a radio on your Pip-Boy, right? When you get to the ruins, tune it to the lower end of the band and listen in. You'll be able to hear the interference. Follow the signal, and it'll lead you to a Courser. Then you just have to... not get killed.” The mutant leans his hip against the workbench. “Not gonna lie; the odds aren't in your favor here. But if you do make it, remember what I said about the serum. I need it, badly.

“If we manage to get in, me and Leo will do our best to get it for you. Thank you, Virgil.”

“I...” He looks away, almost like he’s ashamed, “I really do hope you find what you're looking for.”

Leo grunts. It sounds almost like an apology, and he’s so tired of those. Sorry your baby is missing, sorry you’ve been thrown into this world, sorry that everything is all fucked up. He’s sick of it. Virgil wasn’t the one to organize their son being taken, and on the off-chance that he was, he’s trying to atone for it. Leo can get behind that. But he can’t keep listening to worthless apologies that do nothing but make others feel better for patting the two childless parents on the back. He turns on his heel after giving Virgil a nod and heads for his power armor.

As Ren’s trying to leave behind Leo, a massive green hands envelops her shoulder. She stops and looks up at Virgil, who has something almost like concern in his eyes as he gently guides her by both shoulders to face him. The super mutant looks past her to ensure Leo’s out of earshot and brings his eyes back to hers.

“Look… Are you sure that thing’s not a Courser?” he asks, sounding dead serious. “You personally know the Institute takes people, but sometimes… Sometimes they leave copies behind. Synth replicas.”

Ren listens to the heavy tromp of Leo’s footsteps growing quieter as he gets closer to their power armor at the entrance of the cave. She gives Virgil a shrug. “If he’s not, then they did a good job faking him. He’s my husband. I love him no matter what.”

Virgil looks rather uncomfortable with her admission. The Institute doesn’t view synth as people, never has and likely never will. Such truths like Ren just gave are inconceivable. But Virgil gives her a hesitant nod and glances out once more. “Just… Keep an eye on him.”

With that, he lets her go.

Her boots kick up a little bit of dust as she walks. Leo could, in theory, be a synth. Even a tough man like him would have a hard time surviving a shot from a .44 to the chest. But there hasn’t been the ‘tell-tale’ shift in personality that all accused synths seem to have, excluding the fact that he’s shown a little more emotion than before the war. Even on that end, it’s probably because he knew he needed to be a person for her so she didn’t fall apart. Other than that, he’s still the same Leo. He’s still snarky, still an asshole, still tries to contort her into odd positions when they have sex like she’s a flexible gymnast and not a post-baby, almost-30-year-old woman.

Still. Now Virgil’s got it in her head. Synth copies know everything about the person they replace, right? Every thought, all the intricate relationships, each little insignificant memory. What’s something Leo wouldn’t think about, even in a situation where a synth replaced him? Ren’s brows come together as she approaches him.

Leo is busy zipping his pants when she gets to him. There’s a dark puddle on the ground, slowly draining down into the cave in a small line. He glances up, raising a brow as he fastens his belt.

“Dude, did you piss in Virgil’s house?” she asks, looking down at the puddle.

“Did you expect me to go outside?”

She blinks at him. “Yeah? You’re supposed to be the civilized one between the two of us.”

“I’m not going out in that.”

Ren rolls her eyes. “Of course not. Anyways, can I see something? Just trust me.”

His brow goes up once more, but gives her trust, lets her lift his arm and bunch his shirt up. There are faint bruises along the warm olive skin, the small occasional scar here or there. She shoves his shirt up higher, exposing his armpit. Leo makes an uncomfortable noise as her fingers make contact with the sensitive skin, doing his best not to fight against her as the touch tickles the ever-loving shit out of him.

To her credit, she does her best not to tickle him too much as she pushes around the dark hair. It’s too dark and just a little too thick for her to look without touching. It takes a moment for her to recall where it should be, and there’s a brief panic when she doesn’t find it right away. But she pushes a few hairs and hopes.

Ren lets out a small breath. It’s still there. If she didn’t know any better, she’d just think it was a patch of discolored skin. But she knows better. The scar is there because of her failed attempt at helping him contain and maintain the hair, just after they got married. She’d cut him with the razor and taken a small strip of skin in the process. But he never remembers the scar is there. It’s so small and insignificant that even _he_ thinks its a patch of discoloration whenever he gets around to trimming the hair down. The Institute wouldn’t know to put something like that there. Satisfied, Ren nods and pulls his shirt back down.

“What, exactly, was the point of digging around in my armpit?” Leo asks, rubbing the spot through his shirt.

She shakes her head a little. “Just… Needed to see something. I’ll tell you later. Now come outside and watch my back, because unlike you I’m not pissing on his floor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The messenger idea was based on one that [imperfectkreis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectkreis/pseuds/imperfectkreis) used in their [Tate series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/184958). I can't tell you which chapters of which parts of the series have the messenger, but I know it's there. If you're into M!LW/Butch, you should check it out. They're who really got me back into Fallout stuff many years ago.


	27. Interlude: Wine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interludes are just things that don't really fit anywhere else but add information to the story.
> 
> Some vaguely sexually-suggestive content. They need to de-stress too!

“So you sent the courier?”

Leo gives a firm nod, settling down on the dusty couch to pull his boots off. “Indeed. Preston will be notified by either late tomorrow or the day after, and we’ll have to tell Desdemona personally unless we can intercept a runner.” He tosses his boots at the opposite wall, listening to the satisfying ‘thunk’ as they hit the mark. “But other than that minor detour, both groups should be informed about our success within the next two days.”

Ren lets out an appreciative hum from the armchair she’s sprawled out in. She’s pretty sure her legs aren’t supposed to be hanging over the arm, but fuck it. She’s a grown woman and can sit however she’d like. “Still can’t believe you peed in Virgil’s house.”

A small smile tugs at his lip as he starts unstrapping his armor. “And I can’t believe you tried to piss on the deathclaw corpse outside of the cave, and yet here we are.” There’s a pause. “What if he tries to _eat_ _it_ , Renee?”

She laughs, chair shaking from the movement. “Oh my god, you’re right. I’m worse than you!”

Leaving his leg guards on, Leo rises from the couch and sets about barricading the front door. They’ve set up in an apartment complex near University Point for the night, having managed to wedge themselves through the weakened board covering the main entrance. The second-floor apartment they’ve taken their temporary residence in looks like it’s been untouched since right after the bombs dropped. There’s long rotted food in the fridge, boxed food in the cupboard that isn’t irradiated like everything they’ve found outside. Thick layers of dust on every surface. When Leo’s finished with the door, he checks the kitchen sink. The water runs out like sludge, but with time, it comes out clear. So there’s even running water here that they could bathe in, if the tub is functional.

They’re tracking a Courser, soon. As soon as tomorrow, if they’re able to get to Desdemona in a timely manner. A Courser is going to be rough, if Virgil is to be believed, and maybe it was a mistake to leave their power armor back at the Cats’ garage for the time being. But they can probably take it. If they can take on a deathclaw, they can take on one of these Coursers.

He tries not to worry about it. Perhaps worry is the wrong word, though. Leo isn’t concerned. Thinking about it a lot, yes, but not afraid.

When he looks up from the sink, he finds Renee is gone. He can hear something from the bedroom area and presumes she’s trying to fix it up so they can sleep there in a while. He can only hope she’s trying to get rid of as much dust as possible. While she’s busy, he figures it would be polite for him to try and make something for food. He’s got a singular mirelurk egg left in his bag, maybe he can make something with it? Though he’s not really feeling eggs.

Digging through the cupboard, he finds some macaroni, some Dandy Boys, instamash, an unhealthy number of potato chip cans. What the hell. No meat? No beans, no nuts? No kind of protein? Well, there _is_ a thing of salisbury steak in the fridge, but he’s not eating whatever 200-year-old rotted food goo has soaked into it. Fuck. Should he go out and hunt something?

He tries the other cabinets, but only finds snack cakes and cereal. Oh, so whoever lived here could afford a dozen boxes of Fancy Lads but couldn’t be assed to have a single can of pork’n’beans anywhere? Disgraceful. He closes it with a huff. Carbs, carbs, eggs, and apples don’t sound like an appetizing dinner.

“Hey, Leo?” he hears Ren call. He turns, opens his mouth to speak, and stops.

Oh.

She leans against the doorway with her shirt completely unbuttoned, exposing the pale skin underneath. No bra to be seen. Below, she’s got nothing on but a singular pair of panties he forgot she owned. There’s a bottle of wine in her hand. Red wine, if he’s not mistaken.

“Picked this up back in Jamaica Plains,” she tells him, tipping the corked bottle in his direction. “I was thinking of saving it, but you know. We never did get that date I promised you back in Diamond City.”

Leo tilts his head, waiting for her to go on.

“So, I was looking around and found out the bathroom has a huge tub, right? Definitely big enough for two. And I mean, we both need a good bath.” Her shirt falls open a little more and his eyes momentarily dart down to her exposed breast. “We haven’t taken a bath together in ages.”

“Mmhmm?”

She smiles a little, her own eyes moving down to the obvious erection growing in his pants. “So maybe we make use of this huge tub in the bathroom? We could get drunk,” she shakes the bottle side-to-side, just slightly, “and maybe move things to the bed?”

“Darling,” Leo starts, crossing the room in a few long strides. “You had my attention when you came out here in next to nothing.”

Ren lets out a squeak when he grabs her by the waist, though the sound is cut off by a rough kiss. The bottle knocks against his back when she puts her arms around him, the liquid inside cold from the chill of winter.

“But I’ve got a modified proposition,” he offers, pulling his face back. “I hunt and make us something for dinner first. _Then_ we bathe, get drunk, and fuck. I don’t want to be too intoxicated to make food.”

She seems to think about it for a moment, then nods. “I want to argue, but you make a fair point. Make it quick, Leo, because I’ve got things I want to do to you and there’s only so much time before we need to sleep.

His nails dig into the back of her shirt. “Oh, darling, you’ve got _no idea_ what you’re getting this evening.”

“That a threat?”

“It’s a _promise_ , Renee.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, if I do end up doing sequels to this (Nuka World, Far Harbor), I might finally give them a proper sex scene instead of the fade-out-cut-to-black ones that I've been teasing with
> 
> #LetLeoAndRenFuck2k18
> 
> And look at that! Crawl Out is over a year old. Thanks to all of you who have supported and followed me through this so far. Life is kicking the shit out of me but I'm still trying to get this out to you all. Thank you again <3

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So if you're enjoying this, let me know! I'm always happy to have kudos and comments. Even if it's just some small simple message, I promise, it always means the world to me. It's really nice to know that people are enjoying the content I put out.
> 
> I have [my blog](http://iwillpooponthefloor.tumblr.com) on tumblr, if you'd like to check that out. I've also begun leaving little rough draft snippets from the fic in my [tag just for this fic](http://iwillpooponthefloor.tumblr.com/tagged/crawl-out) if that specifically is something you're interested in. If you don't want the 'spoilers' so-to-speak and you follow me, you may want to blacklist the tag 'crawl out'. But again, if you _would_ like the little snippets, they're in the link!
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!


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